Given this bit of dad's wikipedia entry:"... Shortly thereafter, he returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy. Rawls then married Margaret Fox, a Brown graduate, in 1949. Margaret and John had a shared interest in indexing - they spent their first holiday together writing the index for a book on Nietzsche...

...maybe it's not all that surprising that something might go wrong with the offspring.

I continue to be appalled that the crescent has been completely appropriated. I eat my crescent rolls suspiciously, merely glance at the crescent moon and I am beginning to understand the full implications of, dare I say it, Croissants. French and Islamo-fascist. I bet all phone calls from any Au Bon Pain are intercepted by the NSA. And should be.

It's even worse than an islamofascist prayer center—it's a depiction of female genitalia. Yes, female. As in weak, appeasing, pussified sweet surrender female. Now is that the kind of memorial we want for manly patriotic Americans? (Of course, I've never actually seen any female genitalia. But I know it when I imagine it, and it's right there next to the grassy knoll.)

Actually, there are a few sane, and very funny voices (amidst the nutjobs) in the comments Rawls'(!) crescent lunacy post.

Man, the obsessive-compulsive fussing over the numerology is just creepy...and then there are all those right-wing blogs chiming in and cheering him on to deeper and deeper madness. That poor guy needs help.

This "female" thing seems to be a commong talking point for wingnuts. There's a wacko posting on my local neighborhood message board who's always trotting out phrases like "feminized liberals." Wonder what the well all this fountain of shit springs from?

For a woman, fighting against an invader also risks death, but surrender offers much better reproductive prospects for women than for men. A woman’s reproductive capacity is part of the booty, often the primary booty, that invaders have always been after. Thus a fertile woman could almost be guaranteed that, with surrender, her reproductive capacity would not be wasted. This difference in biological incentives will have left women with stronger instincts to surrender.

And, suddenly, we have the answer to the old Zen riddle "What is the sound of one hand typing?" Even worse than the Big Giant Head or Scooter Libby's attempts at "erotic fiction".

Holy jeezul, it's like a batshit-crazy wingnut version of this kind of New Agery. Hell, I'm suprised Mr. Loon ain't warning us about the link between Islam and the Satanic Reptilian invaders from Arcturus. (Or is that not far off?)

I have a challenge for you all. How about if a couple of your visitors to my post check out one or two of my assertions and report back here whether they are correct or not?

An obvious starting point is the orientation of Murdoch's huge red crescent within two degrees of Mecca. You can find my analysis here, and here is a great circle calculator you can use.

Here are some updated coordinates for the crash site and Mecca, from Google Earth. Crash site: 40:03:07N by 78:54:17W, Mecca 21:25:48N by 39:49:12E.

The Memorial Project never investigated this information, even after hundreds of people tried to tell them. I asked the publicity manager when he got in touch with me: "Did anyone at the Memorial Project ever investigate the orientation of the crescent on Mecca?" He answered: "Everything faces somewhere."

Are you guys going to be as oblivious as that? If so, you are going to be awfully surprised when this thing gets withdrawn.

I just checked Mr. Rawls' assertions using the "great circle" link and info he gave, and unless I'm reading it wrong it says the course from the crash site to Mecca is 317.5 degrees - 42.5 degrees off.

And even if it WAS pointing directly at it, it's still a crap arguement. So it points at Mecca. Big deal.

317.5 is the direction from Mecca to the crash site. So good! Mr. Ubu punched the numbers into the calculator correctly. He just looked in the wrong heading box for the result.

Does anyone else think orientation on Mecca is no big deal? Do you know what a crescent that people face into to face Mecca is called? It is called a "mihrab," and is the central feature around which every mosque is built, the same way that every Christian church is built around an altar and cross.

Does that make anyone curious about what else is in Murdoch's design? It sure made me curious. You all can't be THAT much different.

And still - your point is? There's a EEEEVIL Islamic Conspiracy to align the memorial with Mecca to channel the earth energy and revive the Elder Gods? The Black Magic Islamofascist symbolism is going to turn us all into Muslim fanatics? What?

Pere, you are a very odd bird. You can't say "yes," because that would be a lie, so you say "yes?" which is who knows what. Your whole schtick is to avoid thinking straight for two seconds in a row. That was pretty obvious when you reported the Mecca to crash-site direction rather than the crash-site to Mecca direction because it was the Mecca to crash-site direction that was wrong.

How about somebody else? There has to be some rationality amongst the lot of you, or what the hell are you doing?

I'm a psychiatric social worker who often works with individuals with fixed delusions. To them, their perceptions and interpretations of events around them make perfect sense, and everyone else is crazy, irrational, ignorantly unconcerned or part of the conspiracy. Sorry, Mr. Rawls, but I'm getting a pretty strong sense of the delusional disorder from you.

reading Rawls obsessive , vapid charting of the 911 Pens memorial reminds me of another famous obsessive wak-job , the serial killer John Doe in Seven ( se7en to fans ) , and his endless , painfully regimented notebooks . The biggest and most pertinent difference being that John Doe made a lot more sense , and he was a Pure sociopath.

Interesting - this is what real art is about. The Rorschach-type ambiguity that allows you to bring your own thoughts, experiences, sensibilities, etc., delivering a unique and personal interpretation to someone else's work. Me, - I'm a sentimentalist and probably too literal - I saw a shape that would almost be the ground being dug out by the plane's entry, the red of the maples a show of the blood and the landscape blending together in a grove - an ashes to ashes approach that at some point will be impressive and beautiful in its display.Alec has shown a great dark paranoid interpretation, tinged with a nationalistic (?or would that be religious) fanaticism that shows so much of his own inner psyche. I think he has been creatively stifled and therefore wants to add meanings to the artist's work that aren't there. I think Alec should pursue his artistic dream. The sample I've seen of his early work is simplistic and obvious but I'm sure with a little practice he can express his racism with some subtlety.

Sarah: I am delusional because I try to get people to pay attention to THE FACTS? I suppose your model of rationality is Pere Ubu, who sees a fact in fron of his face (the crash-site to Mecca direction) and has to immediately look away and report an errant "fact" instead (the Mecca to crash-site direction)?

At this point, I'm wondering EVERYBODY here completely irrational. What does Mr. Bogg have to say? Is he any more capable of investigating a basic fact, like the Mecca orientation of Murdoch's crescent, than his readers? Do it. Let's have some due dilligence here. He claimed I am wrong. Let's see him verify it, or admit HE was wrong, as any honest person would gladly do.

I reported the "wrong" direction because I had expected the course to be 0 degrees if it "pointed" at Mecca. (I'm not good at math. Bite me.)

I responded "...yes?" because I have no fucking idea what you're looking for in positing a "altar and cross" at the crash site. YOU are the one who's got a broomstick up the ass over a perceived religious reference, not me. (and that's ALL it is, chucko - a percieved religious reference.) And you STILL haven't explained WHAT the big frickin' whoop it would make if it WAS aligned with Mecca or it's a huge crescent or it's red or it's got a tree where the star should be.

I don't care WHAT it looks like - you must, otherwise you wouldn't have written page after page after page of "proofs" that this is some sort of wierdass EEEEEVIL conspiracy thing.

May I advise you to look into "Everquest"? It'd offer you the same opportunities for obsessiveness and allow you to be just as obnoxious. Plus it'd keep you off the streets, which would be a real benefit from my point of view.

When i was 8 years old , my Dad and I did a test . We left a strip of bacon in a cardboard box , another in a cardboard pyramid and another on a table top . After a week , the bacon in the pyramid was the best preserved. Had we tested an amazing property of shape dynamics ? Had we found the secret of preserved mummies in Egypt? Did it affect our lives one bit ?

Please explain the pyramid on the US dollar bill . I am scared pissless.

That "surrender" quote of Rawls by PZ...whoah boy. It's often been my experience during sex that men surrender to me. But really, it seems to me that each surrenders to the other. Makes for a cozy time. Am I a crazy delusional female who doesn't know her biological place?

I'm a psychiatric social worker who often works with individuals with fixed delusions. To them, their perceptions and interpretations of events around them make perfect sense, and everyone else is crazy, irrational

I still don't see why it is relevant whether the memorial faces Mecca, the Vatican or Wrigley Field. I doubt that someone paying respect to a missing loved one is going to sniff the air and exclaim, "Hey! I'm almost facing Mecca!"

The Memorial Project never investigated this information, even after hundreds of people tried to tell them. I asked the publicity manager when he got in touch with me: "Did anyone at the Memorial Project ever investigate the orientation of the crescent on Mecca?" He answered: "Everything faces somewhere."

Other things never properly investigated :

The glowing man on my front lawn

Roswell

"Back, and to-the-left..."

America Votes 2000, 2004.

911 Rubble

RODS ( i think they're likely friendly)

in short , many urgently needed answers are waiting for enterprising young obsessives to get to the bottom of them .

I have an address for a guy who makes foil hats directly from a casting of your head ...gimme a sec...

The Memorial Project never investigated this information, even after hundreds of people tried to tell them. I asked the publicity manager when he got in touch with me: "Did anyone at the Memorial Project ever investigate the orientation of the crescent on Mecca?" He answered: "Everything faces somewhere."

Other things never properly investigated :

The glowing man on my front lawn

Roswell

"Back, and to-the-left..."

America Votes 2000, 2004.

911 Rubble

RODS ( i think they're likely friendly)

in short , many urgently needed answers are waiting for enterprising young obsessives to get to the bottom of them .

I have an address for a guy who makes foil hats directly from a casting of your head ...gimme a sec...

We think you are delusional because you are exhibiting magical thinking. Let's say the FACTS you are obsessed with are true. As Pere Ubu and Crazy Homeless Guy on the Bus have pointed out, what does it matter? Are the people visting the memorial going to magically become Islamo-fascist because the memorial is a mihrabi? Are people flying in planes overhead going to be suddenly converted to radical Islam?

No.

You see, it doesn't matter what shape the memorial is, what color the trees are in the autumn and what direction some lines you draw point - what matters is the the families of the victims liked and selected the design and will hopefully get some comfort out of the memorial.

The reason the memorial redesign is not that different from the original is not because of some grand conspiracy, but because the families of the victims liked it the way it was orignally. If the committee wanted to incorporate the world's biggest cross, who would we be to argue? Most of us know a memorial which is a big cross isn't going to magically convert anyone to radical Christianity. We live in the real world.

But sadly, there is no use arguing with a delusional person. We can only hope you get some psychiatric help.

Has anyone checked with Muslims to find out if they are disturbed that their religious symbols are being appropriated by a predominately non-Muslim country to build a memorial to a group of non-Muslim citizens? I'd think some of them would be pretty pissed off.

John QP : I do , and it is . Alex is freaked beacuse the Islamic world order ( its coming , just you see...New Isalamabad on the East River , no Joke Man !) got a guy named Murdoch to create a Muslim Memorial in advance of the Invasion (Arab army sufficient to occupy USA or in fact Pensylvania yet to be determined) ...OR , he's upset that the familes and tourists will be Duped into standing in the middle of some subliminal swastika...

Like the rest of the whineybabies the tough-guy right really are , they assume the American People are blind and unaware, and about to be take in by the sublest manipulation. Funny , the left seem to hold most of the traditional laws and the character of the people to be more durable than the conquering right do .

Okay, none of you think it matters whether the central feature of the memorial is the central feature of a mosque. But humor me. Somebody go and verify whether or not the crescent does indeed face directly away from Mecca.

You have to take a screen shot of the site plans ("alt" + "print screen") and paste it into MS Paint and use Paint's pixel counting tools. Then you have to compare with the Mecca direction from the great circle calculator above. It'll take you about 20 minutes. Then you can have something other than a fact-free discussion.

Wouldn't that be novel? Try it. I guarantee, it will make a significant difference in your world view. Facts! They actually exist, on all kinds of subjects. They could actually become your world, if you would pay attention to them.

A pair of sticks of straw fallen to form a cross may not be tread upon. They should be burned in Situ.Any birthmark of collection of birthmarks in the shape of a star indicate a child of Shaitan. This child should be placed out on a hill at the full moon for Wolves. Any child born with teeth is a child of Shaitan and should likewise be left for wolves.Any republican woman who thinks Bush made mistakes May have spoken to a Leftist and should be left out for wolves

Alec, Alec, slow down, listen to the people. We know you can find endless, fascinating claims of relationships between shapes, symbols, facts, dates and ideas. This is because this universe we live in is unimaginably complex and intertwined. Any of us, even the most brilliant multidimensional paragons of human intellect, focus only on the smallest part of it. That's the nature of reality. So when you go looking for something in this massive Rorschach test, you're going to find it! Just like Christians and Hindus and Muslims find their respective Gods, why atheists find their no-gods, and why delusional people of all stripes find their shiny needles amongst these infinite haystacks.

You've presented nothing that matters to anybody who has even a basic understanding of the complexities of reality.

So count all the pixels you want. We've got lives to lead and a country to save from people equally as nuts as you but with much bigger dicks to fuck us over with.

I just had Cashew Chicken for dinner and I'm certain some of the crescent-shaped cashews fulfilled the Great Circle requirement. Does that make my meal a mihrabi? Am I an Islamo-Fascist now that I have internalized the mihrabi?

The importance of planting the central features of a mosque on the crash site is not what it would mean to you foolish infidels (nothing) but what it means for Muslim believers. In every traditional school of Islamic doctrine, the first duty of all Muslims is to wreak all carnage necessary to keep any Islamic territory from ever reverting to infidel control. Planting mosques is one of the main ways that Muslims claim territory. If you want to see the scale of murder that mosque sites create in contested terrain, just look at the flashpoints of Muslim murder of Hindus in India. It all starts with the contested mosque sites.

Further, the United States has a far more radicalized Muslim population than most of the Muslim world. 80% of American mosques are Wahabbi mosques. That is bin Laden's sect. If we let Murdoch built the world's biggest mosque on the crash site, it will become a terrific point of conflict. In case you haven't noticed, we are in a world war.

But I am really struck by the utter dishonesty of all the commentators on this site. This pretense that you would be perfectly happy if a giant Christian church were built on the crash site. I know what you people are. You're the secular left, that gets irate over any government entanglement with Christianity.

It is like everybody on this site grabs for the quickest excuse they can come up with to dismiss contrary viewpoints. You don't even care if your excuses make the least bit of sense. Come on, there have to be SOME rational people here.

the first duty of all Muslims is to wreak all carnage necessary to keep any Islamic territory from ever reverting to infidel control. Planting mosques is one of the main ways that Muslims claim territory.

THIS is the bug up your ass?

They're "claiming territory"?

*guffaw*

yes, this will be their beachead for the Great Islamofascist Invasion of America...

That would explain the constant bloodbath in Deerborn Michigan. I guess they are all waiting for the transistor radios under the bed to bark “Cut the tall trees”, then we'll regret all our flippant dismissals.

I suggest Rawls find out Murdoch's bank records and trace the funds back to Riyadh. How else can we be sure.

Claiming territory. Like them crusades but more architecture-y in nature ?

The Islamofascism must be taking hold since I refuse to give any money to the AFA. And I can't find an exorcist in the yellow pages.

Alec, please tell me what to do. I'm just a weak, defeatist female-like liberal. I just thought it was delicious Chinese food. And now those kryptoislamocommiebastards are going to consider me sacred territory and are going to try and conquer me as I build car bombs and suicide-bomber vests in my basement.

No, I sat on my ass and read a book to some schoolkids for the next twenty minutes.

Oh, wait -BUSH did that, just before hauling his little chicken ass off and letting adults like Richard Clarke run things.

And it's FUNNY you're so damn paranoid about MOOSILMS that you're convinced they're talking over the country, one Flight 93(SHanksville, PA. - let's roll and all that bullshit) at a time. Typical bedwetting paranoid whiny-ass tittie-baby rightwingnut.

From my naive point of view, it actually seems prettydarn OK to have an islamic symbol planted at the siteof a tragedy caused, in no small part, by members ofthe church of islam acting in accordance with what theysaw as the teachings of islam.

I would be perfectly happy with a big cross there too.The cross represents the religion of many of the victims.They're dead and right now they're finding out if any ofthat faith stuff they believed in was true. We can only wishthem well, and a cross is a nice sign of that wishing.

Finally, you're somewhat incorrect in your assertionsregarding muslim carnage. Have you recently re-readany good history of Spain from about 711-1492AD ?

Can I find anyone here who thinks it is not appropriate to place the central feature of a mosque as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial? Please, speak up. Wouldn't you like to see how your compatriots would react?

Personally, I am thinking that the mosque defenders would soon be routed by the saner voices. I have seen Bogg's hit counter. I know there are a lot more people visiting than are commenting. Come on sane people. Don't be shy. Take the floor.

Was that your reaction when they took down the Trade Towers? Do you even remember what Flight 93 was?

Alec, just because you lack empathy with your fellow human beings doesn't mean your fellow human beings lack empathy with each other. In fact, the insistence of those on this board that the families should be allowed to choose the shape for the memorial is an example of this empathy. Allowing the families to choose the memorial that will bring them the most comfort is a way of honoring both the families and the dead, which is a concept you do not seem to understand. You feel that 9/11 and the deaths of that day are things to be used to advance your own paranoid theories, while the rest of us feel that 9/11 was a tragedy to be remembered.

Please Alec, grow some empathy for other people and get your head out of your ass.

It isn't too late . Chase the cashews with some Kentucky Burbon and Branch Water. Do not share your vital essence with Any working woman. Do not use flurodated toothpaste. It isn't too late and you don't have to Act on the Hate in you . They're just Nuts. It is also determined by my calculations ( using Mac-paint and the pixel counting tools) that since the cashews were definately ROTATING as they descended your esophagus, they were only alligned for at most .02 seconds each with Mecca. Gerabaldi v Arkansas finds this to be insufficient for you to be claimed as sacred territory.

Now , Mr Rawls, I can't seriously be expected to run your majic circle formula when you still haven't answered , or even acknowledged, my Pyramid question above . Now who is being unreasonable?

I think we have found the root of all the delusional ranting - Theresa Heinz-Kerry, the most feared-by-whiney-ass-wingnuts woman after Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Isn't it strange how contemptuous of women these fraidy-cat wingnuts are at the same time they are terrified of a woman who has some power, money and/or intelligence? It makes no sense to us sane folks.

Alec keeps reaching out for people who agree with him that this truly matters, let alone worth spending hours on. I choose to respect the victim's families and their wishes. I'm sure that Alec truly thinks that he can honor their dead relatives better than they can.

Alec,The stone hard truth of the matter is that even thoseof us who are willing to concede that there might actuallybe islamic symbolism involved have thought the matterthrough and come to the conclusion that it doesn'tmatter.

Thank you for your deep concern; without it we probablywouldn't have given the symbolism a moment's thought. But now we have. And again, taking all your points intoserious consideration, it just doesn't matter.

I'm sorry that the idea that some people think this way isdriving you nuts.

In our next installment, Mr. Rawls writes, "And another thing: potable water fluoridation. It threatens our national bodily essence..."

Not really, but this post is young, or young-ish.

First, I know some of the memorial design team members, but not the Murdochs. I am thoroughly confident that, skilled as they are, that my aquaintances' jaws would hit the floor reading Mr. Rawls' "It points at Mecca!" accusation, if for no other reason than, if they'd wanted to point a crescent at Mecca, they damned well would have made sure that they didn't miss by 2 degrees. Oh, and to discover that a crescent "points" anywhere, at all, really. And to contend that the spire is sundial, using trees, not usually chosen to precisely mark anything, at all, well, that's just awesomely, deeply, far out into left field, way beyond the fence and the parking lots. (By the way, none of these people are Muslim, or speak or read Arabic, and I've known one of them for about 20 years.) As far as a gathering space goes, you'd think that they'd have rendered that central area flat, rather than kept the cross-slope, in order to better organize the gathering of the umma before prayers and to focus the crowd more easily. Otherwise, you'd might think that the crescent-shape merely is a path around, leading to something, something like the crash site. It's all about that funky third dimension, Mr. Rawls. Don't feel bad. People who don't read architectural plans very often don't realize that, just because the drawing is flat, that the thing drawn isn't.

And that comment doesn't even touch whether the crescent is an Islamic symbol. I remember when the French government banned overt religious symbols in public schools they were left scratching around for an Islamic symbol to cite as an answer to the prohibition against wearing obvious crosses or stars of David as pendants. (Best they could do: the Hand of Fatima--which I note, is suspiciously like that "shared resource" icon you get in Windows OS. I always knew Bill Gates was on the Other Side.) It's tough for a faith that rejects all graven images to come up with a symbol--which is why the crescent isn't truly taken as religious one. It has been associated with the most powerful Islamic state (the Ottoman Empire) and spread throughout that modern empire when Committees of the Red Cross were formed in it, and when the committee organizers realized that the appeal of a former crusader symbol was pretty small and maybe organizational success required something else. But, purely Islamic a crescent is not. In fact, I'd guess that the Muslims who most vigorously reject the crescent as an Islamic symbol are the very fundamentalists who applaud, and might join, al-Quaida.

I'd write more but...Well, I have to - I have to go now, Duane, because I, I'm due back on the planet Earth.

"Allowing the families to choose the memorial that will bring them the most comfort is a way of honoring both the families and the dead, which is a concept you do not seem to understand."

They are not going to feel much comfort, Luthe, when they realize that they have built the world's largest mosque on the crash site. I suspect it will destroy their lives. How do you live that down? They never will.

By your thinking, it was wrong for people on the ground to call the passengers on Flight 93 and warn them that the hijackers were not planning on negotiating. They should have been shielded from the unpleasant truth.

Yes, Alec, I'm sure it will soon be full of ullulating Islamofascists praying to their Satanic gods and cheering their success at their clever infiltration of a Sacred Holy 9/11 Jesus-Bush-America site. Just remember to take off your shoes when entering soverign Islamofascist territory, or they'll saw your head off!

(That's sarcasm, by the way, since you evidently have trouble telling.)

What's with that "feminized liberal men" business? Simple. When they're not hating liberals for having better sex lives than they do, nutbar right-wingers like to project their sexual fears and fantasies onto them.

It's an inevitable consequence of the long-term right-wing campaign to recast liberalism and American political progressivism as The Other, something alien, rather than a reasonable and practical set of political beliefs their parents and grandparents happily supported. Any group that gets Othered will become a focus of sexual fantasies and projections by people in the designated mainstream. That's why Oriental and Middle Eastern fantasies are a major subcategory of British-American porn.

Rawls clearly feels threatened and defensive about images that read to him as being open, spread, unresisting, pliant, and vulnerable. He associates these characteristics, not with women, but with a feminized role taken by men.

(I dunno. Maybe someone told him Islam means "submission," and he took it wrong.)

Anyway, it makes Baby Rawls feel personally unsafe to be associated with such a supine (or prone; his pick) position. He deals with this by projecting it onto fantasized liberal men, then resents his invented liberal men for lying down and taking it, 'cause next thing you know, those guys are going to be spreading their feminized liberal cooties to him.

I just don't understand why Baby Rawls isn't in the military. Given his views, I don't see how he has much business being anywhere else.

They are not going to feel much comfort, Luthe, when they realize that they have built the world's largest mosque on the crash site.

I posted (@2:15): ...OR, he's upset that the families and tourists will be Duped into standing in the middle of some subliminal swastika...

DING, we have a winner, it’s Theory 2 .The Sheep Need Me Theory: The American people, in their childlike innocence (in this case the families who wrongly chose the too-mentioned memorial) have yet to Realize the ride they've been taken for. They need the strong-willed, clear thinking Mr. Rawls to show them their dangerous ignorance. People like Mr. Rawls have been ridiculed in the past only to shown to have been right all along. Thank god he's standing Vanguard for them at home, not in some dangerous place like Baghdad...as Scott C 1:45 said : Wow. They don't usually just jump into the butterfly net like that.

Alec raises a reasonable point regarding the orientation of the circle-thingy. But he neglects to mention that the memorial site is surrounded by roads, each of which intersects with another at a right angle.

Brian C.B.: You say you have friends who worked on the project. Why don't you suggest to them that they verify whether Murdoch's crescent is oriented on Mecca? It really is almost trivially easy to verify. I would not be surprised if Murdoch and his wife are the only one's who know the Islamic symbolism of what he did. The the other people really should investigate and know for themselves. Their reputations for the rest of their lives are at stake. The people at this site might be willfully blind in the extreme, but the majority of Americans will not be. The truth WILL out here, and your friends need to know what it is ASAP.

Um ... "the majority of Americans" are going to subscribe to your insane theory that this memorial is a Secret Mosque In Disguise That Will Be The Flashpoint For An Islamofascist Slaughter Of Americans?

Do you really believe that you can convince "the majority of Americans" that Murdoch is a Secret Agent Of Islamofascism?

"I am thinking that the mosque defenders would soon be routed by the saner voices. I have seen Bogg's hit counter. I know there are a lot more people visiting than are commenting. Come on sane people. Don't be shy. Take the floor."

We're on the floor. We all think you're a froot loop. Thanks for the chuckles, Chuckles.

"By a quirk of fate Flight 93 was delayed on the runway at Newark airport for 45 minutes. By the time it was airborne, the other three planes had reached their intended targets. As a result, the forty passengers and crew on board Flight 93 were the first to inhabit our new and terrifying post 9/11 world.

The terrible dilemma those passengers faced is the same we have been struggling with ever since. Do we sit passively and hope this all turns out okay? Or do we fight back and strike at them before they strike at us? And what will be the consequences if we do?"http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_6949.html

Alec is identifying with the passengers of Flight 93 but not with their families. Alec Rawls writes "The truth WILL out here, and your friends need to know what it is ASAP."

My question is: ASAP or else what? What in Alec Rawls mind is the worst thing that could happen if the design is built as is? What exactly is supposed to be at stake?

Surely not my life, my fortune or my sacred honor. But what about Alec's?

Please, please, please -- share with us any other evidence you have that Paul Murdoch and his associates are Secret Agents Of Islamofascism! Does Mr. Murdoch align his bathroom towels towards Mecca? Have any of his associate architects been spotted eating hummus?

Conspiracies by their nature are rebuttal-proof. If I come up with a million facts to say the flight 93 memorial is not a 'secret mosque' then I am clearly just part of the conspiracy. People will believe whatever they want to believe.

This is going to join the classic ranks of conspiracy theories alongside "Denver airport is full of occult symbolism" and "FEMA is building concentration camps" and "Bush let 9/11 happen on purpose".

People here seem to be under the impression that a half mile wide crescent, oriented on Mecca, can occur by random chance. I think that is pretty flakey, but don't worry, Murdoch provided plenty of confirmation. Look further into my analysis. There is also an array of crescents of trees in the Tower of voices section of the memorial. These are turned exactly 90 degrees to the large red crescent, so that a line across the tips of the crescents points to Mecca. There are numerous other proofs of intent in Murdoch's plan as well. He obviously anticipated the willfull blindness of people like you tboggers, and put in the multiply redundant proof necessary to make his accomplishment irrefutable once it is a fait accompli. Wake you little brains up. Take a look.

As for whether rotating the whole structure 90 degrees would make it acceptable, not at this point. Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.

JohnQP: well, lets say it's what makes The Web great between we lefties and other symapathizers; being a Canuk I am enherently un-American , but don't tell Rawls , he'll Mobilize against me .( his boycot of Pillsbury closed the only pastry manufacturer in my part of the tundra , causing unemployment to double; I can't take his onslaught any more than Paris can afford to buck Bill Oreally) I already miss the glowing man . Like Islamofascism, once you let your guard down , it's only a matter of time.

Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.

*snort giggle guffaw*

oh how clever of those Mooslims to sneak such horrible Black Magic under our very noses. One might think the folks in Washington who're so nervous about terrorists and Islam might pick up on Alec's lead and stop this heresy, but I guess the nucleo-psychic emanations from Bin Laden's brain are clouding their minds and only Alec can save us from a Hell On Earth of bhurkas and hummus.

Obviously our only hope is if we build a giant cross in Iraq pointing toward the Pentagon. Only then will the evil psycho-Islamic radiation from the giant feminist crescent-abomination be stopped, and we will be saved from turning into feminzed terroristical girly-men Islamofascists.

As for whether rotating the whole structure 90 degrees would make it acceptable, not at this point. Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.

By that definition, I would say almost no memorials should exist, as one's definition of a terrorist is entirely dependent on one's point of view. To a Native American, it is entirely possible that all of modern America is a terrorist memorial, and should be destroyed.

Is the Alahambra a terrorist memorial (as well a world cultural treasure)? What about the various memorials to the Confederate dead?

Once again, Alec, your logic fails. You are the one who is willifully blind.

Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.

" ...Winesses claimed the obviously distraught man cried out " ...don't any of you understand ...?" as he began crushing transluscent blocks in the memorial wall with a sledgehammer he brought with him .He appeared to be weeping. Familes gathered at the site were described at being frightened by his wild ravings , and claimed that he invited them all to join in dismantling what he described as " an Islamofascist Memorial to Tyrant Martyrs" . He was reportedly sedated and will be housed down the hall from Squeaky Fromme in Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas." from future news service

Wait a second here. Did I read that this Mecca-pointing crescent is off by 2 degrees?

Whoa, Alec, please explain that little tiny hole in your argument. Are you saying Murdoch is a lousy architect? Oh, wait, I just put on my tin foil hat and I now understand: It's part of his plot to keep us misdirected. Being spot on, like any good architect would have made it, were that his intent, that would've been TOO easy to spot. I'm beginning to see! A man sees what he wants to see, and disregards the rest.

Please, please, please -- share with us any other evidence you have that Paul Murdoch and his associates are Secret Agents Of Islamofascism!

Oh, dear one, it goes far deeper than that: this design was selected by open competition. Yes, that's right, not only was it necessary for the Murdoch's design team to have a design that is secretly a mosque, but a design that is so obviously beautiful that it would win on other grounds while keeping its devious mosque-ness under wraps from the design jury. Or, perhaps the design jury-which included relatives of the Flight 93 crew and passengers--has been bought.

People here seem to be under the impression that a half mile wide crescent, oriented on Mecca, can occur by random chance.

Perhaps because people here don't look for obscure, consipiratorial agencies at work in ordinary life, having seen the handiwork of chance do enough damage all on its own. I know that this won't be an easy realization for you, Mr. Rawls, but you're not even the Bull Goose Looney of Conspiracies on this comment thread. Many of us remember the Warren Commission. The Single Bullet Theory? That swallow went down hard, and some of us fought it. Accepting that this weird, Islamic pseudo-orientation thing you've cooked up is actually just the product of chance? Piece of cake, baby. Trust me.

Since he's a secret Islamofascist agent, do you think he makes them wear veils? And why, indeed, is he allowing them to work at all??

Seriously, though -- have you given any thought to exactly how this atrocious conspiracy has (nearly) succeeded in building a Secret Mosque upon this sacred ground? And what will happen if they are allowed to succeed??

"There are still 44 translucent blocks on the flight path to the crash site, matching the total number of dead, instead of just the forty translucent blocks that are dedicated to the forty murdered Americans." Alec Rawls.

"The western wall holds a folded band of polished, translucent white marble with the forty names inscribed in alpabetical order and the date of September 11, 2001." Flight93MemorialProject.org

http://www.flight93memorialproject.org/crescent_of_embrace.asp

"I'm not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have the feeling that about 60 percent of what you say is crap" Letterman

Does he speak for you? Are you all so locked into group-think that there isn't anyone here who is willing to acknowledge that they have a problem with a Mecca oriented crescent being the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial? I'm taking your measure here, and boy are you small.

Alec, Thanks for answering my question. You have certainly made your position very clear. What's next on your radar screen? The 9/11 memorial in NYC, no matter its design, can easily be construed as a celebration of what the terrorists accomplished on that terrible day. That has to be stopped also. Good luck in your efforts.

Are you all so locked into group-think that there isn't anyone here who is willing to acknowledge that they have a problem with a Mecca oriented crescent being the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial?

Alec, as I pointed out above THE MIHRAB IS NOT CRESCENT-SHAPED.

The mihrab is usually a rectangle shape like a window. You have confused the mihrab and the crescent. The crescent is a pagan symbol adopted by the Ottoman empire in the 15th century and is only used by some Muslims.

Are you all so locked into group-think that there isn't anyone here who is willing to acknowledge that they have a problem with a Mecca oriented crescent being the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial?

Okay: "oriented" to Alec means a 2 degree orentiation over 10685.5 kilometers. That's not exactly on the nose, it seems to me. I'll let someone else compute how far away the "straight line to Mecca" actually is - as I said I suck at math.

Alec, I find it utterly fascinating that whenever you are confronted with logic, reason, and facts which contradict your worldview, you respond with attacks on unrelated points and appeals to supporters which never materialize. Are you that afraid of our 'feminized liberal' views and points? Or are you just ashamed you are being intellectually tromphed by a bunch of liberals and girls?

"If you look at the video provided, you'll see that the orientation of the "Crescent of Embrace" is determined, or at least very strongly suggested by the contours of the ground. (The PDF map shows the same thing). The contours run right through the opening of the crescent. Unless you wanted the park visitors to climb up and down contour lines the opening was exactly where it had to be. So the simplest explanation it seems to me, is that the orientation of the Crescent of Embrace is coincidental."

...

"Looking at the architect's portfolio and the topography it was better than even odds he was going to come up with a semicircle somewhere and if you allowed for twenty degree arcs as the limit of suggestion, there was a 1 in 9 chance of an accidental orientation to Mecca because any azimuth has a reciprocal."

There is absolutely nothing that stands up in Rawls frothing. He's bats, friends.The passion and effort in being so wrong and wasting so much resource is distressing, so ,I'm going to find someone to debate the calorie content of lint with. It will be more lucid.

You're just amazingly out to lunch Rawls, but keep it up if it gives you peace. I can't imagine how dwelling in delusions sewn from hate and fear could possibly, but have at it . You sad freak.

Wading through the comments, I don't think anyone's brought the point up, but I believe the WHOLE reason for the crescent in the memorial design was to recall the crescent-shaped impact crater of the flight.

As for what direction it "points", my first guess would be that the orientation was chosen for any of the following: (1) something to do with the trajectory of the plane itself, (2) the topography of the memorial site, (3) the desirable play of light and shadow based on the arc of the sun through the sky, (4) a complete accident.

But then, I'm not a conspiracy nut.

Sometimes I get the feeling that 9/11 gave a strong "sense of purpose" to a whole lot of people who had never even heard of Islam before then. I wonder what they'd be doing today if 9/11 hadn't happened. Probably posting long commentaries on the Satanic messages encoded in the floorplan of the Clinton library... sigh...

"I heard this week from Alice Hoglan. Her son, Mark Bingham, was among the leaders of the uprising onboard Flight 93 and she sent along two letters -- one to Malkin, one to Tancredo -- that offer the viewpoint of a woman who spoke by cell phone with Bingham as the rebellion was born and who understands that, just as every Muslim is not a terrorist, every crescent is not a symbol of Islam. It's time to surrender some territory. "

"You have to take a screen shot of the site plans ("alt" + "print screen") and paste it into MS Paint and use Paint's pixel counting tools. Then you have to compare with the Mecca direction from the great circle calculator above. It'll take you about 20 minutes. Then you can have something other than a fact-free discussion."

Dear Mr. Rawls, Allow me to be the first "tbogger" to thank you for sharing your unique thesis with us. Your continued prescence here tonight has been nothing short of magical and I, for one, have not been so thoroughly entertained since the unfortunate cancellation of "Hee Haw".

Do you make personal appearances? I own several bowling alleys here in Arkansas and am always looking for new talent.

"Does he speak for you? Are you all so locked into group-think that there isn't anyone here who is willing to acknowledge that they have a problem with a Mecca oriented crescent being the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial?"

Do I have a problem with a few sort-of-crescent-shaped-features of the memorial accidentally & coincidentally pointing (sort of) in the direction of Mecca? No.

Would I have a problem with it if it turned out that the orientation was intentional? No, it would make me chuckle with glee, because it would demonstrate that the jihadist masterminds behind the conspiracy have completely misdirected their energy: instead of trying to advance their cause, they would have wasted vast amounts of time and money (must have cost millions to pull this together!) on a plan that just makes them look ridiculous and incompetent.

Imagine the post-mortem meeting between Osama and Murdoch:

Osama: You idiot! I gave you ten million dollars and told you to develop a plan to blow up the White House! And you built this stupid "open-air mosque" thing?! What in Allah's name was that supposed to accomplish?

Murdoch: I was, ah, claiming the territory in Pennsylvania for you, master ... you see, I figured that, once the memorial was built, I would reveal its true nature on national TV, and the infidel would be humiliated ... and then all of the Wahabbi Muslims in the U.S. would rush to Pennsylvania and begin slaughtering Christians ...

I am finding my visit here quite amusing too Chris. And yes, against the mounting evidence, I continue to believe that there have to be readers here who believe that it matters if the central feature of the memorial is the central feature of a mosque. The contrary possibility is just too far-fetched.

As to Mnemosyne's claim that a horizontal crescent is not a mihrab: Mihrabs are always three dimensional, both vertical and horizontal. Murdoch's just happens to be primarily in the horizontal dimensions, but that doesn't matter. As someone mentioned (was it Mneosyne?) Islam rejects any imputation that any symbol can in itself can be sacred. Thus there is great flexibility in the way that typical mosque elements are put together. No particular arrangement can be held to be religiously demanded.

That is a part of why there are so many beautiful mosques (of which Murdoch's ranks right up there). Mosque architects are quite free to create beauty. No full featured mosque would be without a mihrab, but Murdoch is perfectly free to arrange it primarily in the horizontal dimensions.

By the way, here is Alec Rawls' nutcase article on the memorial. The comments on that page are almost as interesting as the comments on this page.

I have done some research on Creationism and Creationists in the past, and I have to say that this is similar stuff. The assignment of sinister meaning to insignificant details, while ignoring process and logic is similar. As long as it serves their particular world view.

"That is a part of why there are so many beautiful mosques (of which Murdoch's ranks right up there)"

So you believe Murdoch is building a mosque?

Really?

dude, I really feel sorry for you and hope you don't interact with the relatives of the folks who died in that plane, because you are so fucking disrespectful of their memories by this complete fabrication of yours.

I also remember Maya Lin pummeled and disparaged about her vietnam memorial.Stupid racist folks brought up her heritage as if that made the wall unamerican.

I love Rawls' use of the term 'random chance'. Kinda like 'free gift' or the 'department of redundancy department'. Any 'scholar' who uses the phrase 'random chance' should be laughed at derisively. What a stupid idiot moron.

Ah. Now I see! I must go on a search for all the "hidden" mosques built in this country since 9/11. It is an insidious plot; since "no particular arrangement can be held to be religiously demanded," there must be mosques that face Mecca that NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT EXCEPT THE TERRISTS all over AMURKA!

I would not be surprised to find that the azimuth of the corners of the ridge of the Vietnam Memorial can be interpolated to follow a Great Circle that bisects a cross-section of an angle (determined with a quick side-angle-side calculation performed in MS Paint and Notepad) that, when trisected, yields a center line that is parallel to the North side of Al-Qaeda's primary training camp in Afghanistan (prior to the bombing, of course).

So you are saying that something which may or may not be a significant shape which is pointing 2 degrees off from a significant direction is going to spark an Islamic revolution in Pennsylvania? Yep, sloppy analysis is definitely why you couldn't hack it in academia!

I notice that Alec steadfastly refuses to tell us what will happen if this "crescent" is built - only that it is AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL and anyone who doesn't think it's AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL must not Remember 9/11 and therefore hates America and God and Jesus and George Bush and sunny days and lil' cute kittens.

Just a point of information for the newcomers: Alec kind of answered the "why does it matter?" question around 2:45 pm.

The funniest bit: "In every traditional school of Islamic doctrine, the first duty of all Muslims is to wreak all carnage necessary to keep any Islamic territory from ever reverting to infidel control."

Mister Fister and Julia then reminded him about Spain and he kind of spun off into another rant.

Anyone who can charaterize Spain's throwing out the incompetent rightist bastards that failed to do anything constructive against terrorism, and lied to the public about the attacks, as 'surrender' is just stupid. Wacko sexual politics aside, he just completely misunderstood the intent of the Spanish people when they threw out the incompetent, corrupt, and dishonest puppet Aznar. Either that, or he's a liar.

HTML NOTE: I tried to make the article open in a new window, but the 'TARGET' attribute isn't allowed. So, if you click on the link, you will have to resize the window. Sorry.

Once the terrorist-memorial is discovered, obviously no remnant of it can be allowed to remain, because that is a remnant of a terrorist memorial.

And clearly, in order to expunge these artifacts of treachery, we'll have to go the Full Cathaginian. Uproot the trees. Sow the field with salt. But that would still leave remnants, would it? Oh sure, we could shred the blueprints easily enough, but there are schematics in the CAD system--have to reformat all the computers and the network server--and they probably have backups...best to just burn down the architecture firm.

But what about all the people who've SEEN the terrorist memorial? What about those who've studied and mapped and computed every square inch of the terrorist memorial until it's burned into their memories and they see it in their horrible, horrible, dreams? Those are some powerful remnants; what do we do about those people?

No choice. It's the Global Islamofascist Conspiracy, or Us. We'll have to execute anyone who's seen the plans. Starting with the jury who chose the Memorial (too bad about those family members of the victims, but there's a gigantic al fresco arboreal mosque to flush down the Memory Hole. Gotta break a few eggs.

But wait! What about those people who might have seen the winning design in the mainstream media?!...Man! This is starting to run into some serious numbers now...Wiping out all those remnants is gonna take a real nose-to-the-grindstone, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of effort. We could probably count on Alec's reader(s?) to help round up the remnants (we could offer them some sort of premium for their assistance--vouchers good for a Super Bird at Denny's, or maybe some really cool black-and-silver uniforms!)...

Except...if we're ever going to feel really secure about effacing all remnants of the terrorist memorial, Alec and his reader will have to go in the first batch--the architects and the jury--since they're most familiar with the design.

Damn. Talk about getting the short end of the Cassandra Stick. Life is so unfair sometimes...

Two degrees off? So it misses Mecca by 230 miles (375 km)? Isn't that rather a lot? It could miss Saudi Arabia entirely, even miss the Mid-east, depending on which way it's off.

Issac Asimov used to write tongue-in-cheek articles like this, where he'd play around with numbers like the ratios between the length of the solar day, lunar month, and solar year to derive some fantastic "hidden" truth about the books of the Bible or the number of pillars in some Greek temple. The thing is, he knew he was kidding. And he was sane.

This awesome. Nobody here can acknowledge that building the central feature of a mosque as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial is INAPPROPRIATE. Pere Ubu wants to know "What will happen?" Something has to happen? It is INAPPROPRIATE. It is a memorial to the terrorists.

Here is a question for you all. Answer honestly. What percentage of Americans do you think would regard it as inappropriate for the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial to be the central feature of a mosque, if they understood that a crescent that people face into to face Mecca IS the central feature of every mosque, and that a person facing into Murdoch's crescent if facing Mecca?

Be honest. What are you people? One percent? I'm really amazed that a community of people like you can exist: such an extreme minority view, with NO dissention! How does that happen? What weird bubble-universe do you people inhabit?

Now I'm really serious when I ask dissenting voices to speak up. I want to find out if there really is this weird dissentionless extremity. It just seems beyond possibility. Is this the land of the 20 watt lightbulbs? What IS this? Tbogger! What have you done???

Good lord, Rawls! Get a life. Your own comment page is filled with people who are calling you stupid. It's true, there are a few morons that appear to agree with you, but every loon has it's followers. Or maybe you are pulling a John Lott and manufacturing sycophantic responses to your own inanity.

The bubble universe of which you speak is yours, not ours. We are all members of the reality-based community here on planet earth, where we are more concerned with the well-being of people like the families of the victims of 9/11 than your uproariously funny (yet sadly demented) theories.

But I'm confused now. You've gone from "fire-and-brimstone" talk about something terrible happening to "it's inappropriate". WTF? That's, like, lame. Inappropriate is another word for "not to my liking." And hey, you're free to not like this crescent-shaped thingie at all. You're free to hate it vehemently. But as I recall, it's not your memorial, is it? The people for whom it matters liked it. The rest of us don't think the shape matters one iota.

a crescent that people face into to face Mecca IS the central feature of every mosque

Alec must have missed the comment (by Memnosyne, I believe) that pointed out the mihrab is rectangular, not crescent. And the comments that pointed out the crescent is NOT the symbol of Islam. And my pointing out that a 2 degree divergence over 5000+ miles is NOT "pointing directly at", or even "facing".

Be honest. What are you people? One percent? I'm really amazed that a community of people like you can exist: such an extreme minority view, with NO dissention! How does that happen? What weird bubble-universe do you people inhabit?

Isn't it fucking ironic that this describes his Leader, and his side of the political spectrum, to a T? We must be some kind of horrible uni-mind 'cause we don't agree with his wingnut theory.

In a proper world he'd be drawing up plans for giant robots and mumbling "LAUGH AT ME, WILL THEY? I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!"

"I'm a psychiatric social worker who often works with individuals with fixed delusions. To them, their perceptions and interpretations of events around them make perfect sense, and everyone else is crazy, irrational, ignorantly unconcerned or part of the conspiracy. Sorry, Mr. Rawls, but I'm getting a pretty strong sense of the delusional disorder from you.# posted by sarah : 1:09 PM"

You made it clear, too, that even if the design was rotated 90 degrees you'd still demand the region razed and sterilized, and all first-born children sacrificed in order to cleanse PA.

You've clearly analyzed this thing to death (while waiting for the meds to kick in?), so please tell us: as Ubu has pointed out, the deadly Crescent of Doom is already a shoddy 2 percent off. Now, how much "off" would it have to have been in order to not have triggered your most excellent "scary-islamosfacist-mosque-thingie" alarm?

Pardon me for interrupting Mr. Rawls' wingnuttery by interjecting a relevant fact into the discussion, but have you ever actually seen a mihrab, Alec? I have. It isn't crescent-shaped. It looks just like an arch or a niche. I'm sure there are niches in St. Peter's in Rome that are on a great-circle line to Mecca, particularly since it was built on the old plan such that a celebrant standing at the altar would be facing eastwards. Should the pope have burnt Michelangelo at the stake for being a stinkin' Muslim heretic in disguise?

And you still haven't answered the pertinent question: So what the fuck if it does face Mecca? This would be a bad thing why?

Rawls: Islam rejects any imputation that any symbol can in itself can be sacred. Thus there is great flexibility in the way that typical mosque elements are put together. No particular arrangement can be held to be religiously demanded.

Rawls: if they understood that a crescent that people face into to face Mecca IS the central feature of every mosque

Rawls 2 Minutes From Now: Sometimes when I wake up my pee pee stands up like a minaret, which wikipedia defines as "generally tall, graceful spires, with onion-shaped crowns." This treacherous Islamofascist infiltration of my krypto-krotch usually goes away after I pee, but I can't BELIEVE you bubble-dwelling Tboggers don't think a SIGNIFICANT percentage of the American people would not care if they woke up with a central element of a mosque poking out of their Dr. Denton's!

Didn't you learn in math class that you can draw a line to connect any two points?

Apparently not, so let me clarify: you can draw a line that bisects any circular or semicircular, arced or crescent-shaped object, pavement pattern, wall, street curb, etc. that points to Mecca. Or for that matter, a line that points to ANYWHERE. The curved end of my bathtub can be bisected by a line that points to Mecca. So can both the eastern and western rims of the Grand Canyon. Ditto, the Capitol rotunda.

Who knew my bathtub was a mihrabi, or for that matter (gasp!) the US Capitol rotunda? I guess all those members of the GOP majority who do their voting there must be part of some vast Wahabbist conspiracy!

Seriously, dude, you're off your nut. If you don't believe me, draw a crescent, or arc, or semi-circle on any part of the globe, and then see how easy it is to bisect it with a line that points to Mecca.

Alec, Chris here again- I'm glad that you're enjoying your visit with us here in the Netherworld and hope you will return often.

With that being said, and at the risk of seeming callous or insensitive, I would like to ask you a personal question.

I've been looking at your photo and, well, umm....is that splotch on your neck (you know,that one, on the left, just above your collarline), is that a hickey?

Cause to me it looks suspiciously like a map of Saudi Arabia...and isn't that where Mecca is?

I mean, Holy Shit Alec, couldn't the mere sight of such a symbolic mark drive unenlightened souls like us "tboggers" to commit unspeakable acts? Do you carry a compass so you can constantly keep your neck oriented 180 degrees away from Mecca, and negate the evil forces of the mark?

You know what, Alex? I'm going to take you at your word. Everything you say about the mosque-ness of the memorial design is true, likewise your assertion that said mosque-ness is an intentional product, and not some kind of accident (or the result of a paranoid riot of overinterpretation). And none of the (in the real world pretty much irrefutble) comments by the likes of Brian C. B. and Mnemosyne against your conspiracy theory hold any water.

You've convinced me, bub. And all I can say is: how wonderful! A Muslim crescent marking the site where Muslim fanatics murdered a planeload of people in a foiled attack on an American landmark--what a brilliant use of symbolism! At once a rebuke to the murderers, and a generous, even beautiful reappropriation of their religious iconography, a gesture characteristic of the tolerance and openness of the society they sought to attack. A gesture recognizing that, in fact, the crescent iconography is not, except by a perversion the monument opposes and dissolves, an iconography of murder: that it stands for, at its best, a great and generous civilization no less deserving than "our" own.

I hope you're right, Alex, I really do. Placing a Muslim symbol on the ground where Flight 93 martyred itself would be such a rich, subtle artistic statement, it could only enhance the physical beauty of the design. Anyone not moved by a gesture like that would have to be as divorced from their own humanity as those warped men who took the plane down.

"What percentage of Americans do you think would regard it as inappropriate for the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial to be the central feature of a mosque, if they understood that a crescent that people face into to face Mecca IS the central feature of every mosque, and that a person facing into Murdoch's crescent if facing Mecca?"

In order for a large percentage of Americans to be upset about this, they would have to:- understand what the hell it is you're babbling about, which will be difficult because it makes little sense; and- once they've grasped the subtlety of your analysis, they'd have to suspend their natural disbelief that a highly respected L.A. architect is a secret Islamofascist agent; and finally- they'd have to avoid doubling over with laughter that the Islamofascists came up with such a stupid plan, which does little or nothing to advance their cause.

Assuming that these two astronomically improbable things happen, then yes, a large percentage of Americans will share your outrage.

Uh, no, dude, you can't convince me that "not everything is oriented towards Mecca" because the laws of mathematics state otherwise.

You can draw a line bisecting any curved object that points to whatever you want it to point to. I could draw a line bisecting the memorial that makes it align with the Buddha in my home shrine. Which no more makes it a Buddhist memorial than an Islamic one.

This attack on the memorial reminds me of the Vietnam Memorial. Maya Lin and her design for the Vietnam Memorial were attacked by the then nascent right-wing movement. There is an award winning 1995 documentary available on DVD.

Rent it and you’ll watch a clam, young woman face right-wing hate mongers who inflamed the emotional wounds of war veterans for their own gain. It's a role to which Alex Rawls can aspire. Too bad the families and survivors of all those killed on Flight 93’s aren’t biting. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0967918103/103-5119299-5428669?v=glance

Another movie, Broken Flowers 2005, has Bill Murray seeing signals and signs of a possible son everywhere.

Yo, Little Alec, I see you've reached the "I am an alien observer, and I am finding this a fascinating psychological study" stage, which means you're starting to dissociate; but you can't bug out of the argument because the chemicals in your brain are making this BS crescent-and-mosque delusion way too interesting to you. You're also getting a lot of attention and don't know how to cope with it, even when it's getting you stuck in a bad place.

Don't you have any friends or relatives who can get you some help? Because I swear before God Almighty, you need it. This idea you're fighting for is paltry, indefensible, and dumb. Thinking it's a big important thing? Bad chemicals. That's just bad chemicals.

The rightwing online Kristallnacht-wannabe dimbulbs who egg you on are not doing you a favor. They've got their own bad relationship with neurochemicals. In their case, it's a dependency on the weird but definite buzz they get from working themselves up over the outrage of the week. They don't care whether it's real or true. They just want people to feed them fresh outrage on a regular basis. That's where you come in.

Onward.

There's this one question you keep asking over and over, helpless to shake yourself loose of it: Is it a problem that this memorial design is a crescent that points toward Mecca?

Fine. I'll answer it. I started making fun of this idea way back in September, and I'm clear on it in my mind. And the answer is: No. It's not a problem. Not in the slightest.

Why? Because the crescent doesn't just belong to Islam. It's too big for that. The crescent is a basic geometric shape, a thing that's built into the structure and order of the cosmos. The crescent turns up in the sky as the lunar month waxes, and then again as it wanes. You can find it in seashells, dinner rolls, the markings on the coats of some animals, the shape of the Bay of Naples, a bunch of ornamental euphorbias, the insignia of airborne divisions, more than one American flag, your gramma's patchwork quilt designs, and the letter "C". Split the rock, and if it's one of several varieties of jasper or agate, you'll find the crescent there too.

If some Islamic group had come to us and said "The crescent is our symbol, not yours, so we want you to stop using it," we'd have told them no way, nothing doing -- and we'd have been right to do so.

But not you! No, you're happy to give it away to them, saying "Yup-a-roonie guys, you betcha it's your symbol. We don't have any right to use it unless we're Muslims too."

Yeah, right. What a maroon. Why don't you just give away the store to them while you're at it?

The same goes for the direction East. Count 'em up on your fingers: there are only four cardinal directions. You want to give one of them away to the Islamic world, lock, stock, and barrel? What's Christendom going to do with all of its eastward-facing churches?

Again, I ask you to imagine what would have happened if the Islamic world had come to us and said, "We want you to acknowledge that any time you mention the direction East, you're implicitly referring to the holy city of Mecca." Yeah, right. We'd have sent them on their way with a bug in their ear.

Except for you! You'd have said, "Oh, okay, East = Mecca," and given them an entire cardinal direction, agreeing that anything that faces in that direction must be oriented on their holy city. Doofus! Your argument implicitly makes Islam seem far more powerful and imortant than it actually is.

And if I have "figured Murdoch out"? Where does that leave your braying about the monument as some kind of cryptic Islamofascist Point of Maximum Terror? Or source of Muslim cooties, or whatever? If Murdoch's supposed intentions are as I've suggested—and, indeed, my account of them (leaving aside the fact that such "intentions" pretty much vanish when you consider the design as the product of site topography, the artistic/judging process, and the actual history of Muslim iconography) is vastly more plausible than any of the hysterical scenarios you've spun so far—then what exactly is there about the monument left to oppose?

I say this for your own good, Alec. I have known several people who have been in the grip of mental illness. At some point, they come to the realization that everyone else is unable to see the truth, and they must be saved by the only person who sees things as they really are, themselves.

For a time, they are able to sort of function in society, and keep their illness somewhat under cover. The ill person knows in some way that they can't save the world if they are locked up in an asylum. Eventually, they psychotic break comes, and they can no longer function.

I'll share a personal experience. Someone close to me eventually got to the point that she could not flush her toilet, because she was convinced that people were trapped in the septic tank. Eventually, I had to go and convince her to to to the hospital, but it was very, very, very hard. Even when we would walk to the tank and opened the inspection cover and looked in, she was not convinced.

After she was taken to the hospital, she was briefly kept as an inpatient, and within a few weeks, she was given drugs which helped her to have a more normal perception of the world.

Man, we had a hell of a mess to clean up at her house when she was away at the hospital.

"Nobody here can acknowledge that building the central feature of a mosque as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial is INAPPROPRIATE."

Aha! Thank you. I now understand your concerns. Inappropriate. So the concern is for the families of the survivors, because they might be offended?

Thing is, my friend, the families of the survivors have heard your B.S., and THEY DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK. They like the memorial. It's pretty. There is an arc of trees that will change pretty colors in the fall. It's a nice memorial, grand in scale, yet still accessible to humans. IT WAS CHOSEN BY THE FAMILIES. It wasn't chosen by some super secret trilateral new world order islamofascist fifth column - IT WAS CHOSEN BY THE VERY FAMILIES YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT.

They like it. Leave them the fuck alone. It's their choice as to what kind of memorial they want. They've chosen. End of story.

If the memorial to flight 93 actually WAS a mosque, that would be inappropriate. In the same way that it would be inappropriate if it were a church. Or a synagogue.

But you see...even if everything you claim is spot-on true, it doesn't make this memorial a mosque.

It makes it a coincidence.

Now I know you're going to say, it's too much to be a coincidence. But there's a question you haven't answered: what possible motivation could Murdoch have to knowingly do what you claim he did? I could think of only two: he's a complete batshit nihilist loon, or he's secretly in the employ of terror organizations.

The former would seem unlikely, given that people DO get vetted before being given high profile assignments like this. And as for the latter...I dunno, man, do you think al qaeda has a big need for architects?

You're seeing a crescent--and equating that to its Muslim symbolism--where I'm just seeing an arc. If the "central feature" matches the "central feature" of a mosque, then so be it. Someone above made the point that every intersection of roads forms the "central feature" of a Catholic church. I still drive.

So to answer your question, no, I really don't care if the central features of memorial and mosque are the same because it's coincidental and doesn't have the meaning you want to assign it.

"You have to take a screen shot of the site plans ("alt" + "print screen") and paste it into MS Paint and use Paint's pixel counting tools. "

You did your research by counting pixels in MS Paint?

1. Can't you afford photoshop?

2. You do know that MS Paint pixels aren't even accurate to each other? e.g., draw a circle in MS Paint, then magnify it and follow the pixels around. See what I mean? That is no way an even circle, right?

Now, go rent American Pie: Band Camp and pick up some heating KY lubricant at CVS and fap those Islamists away, OK?

If your really afeared, go sprinkle bacon bits all over the site; that is sure to desecrate it.

now, not being an islamic scholar, correct me if i'm wrong here, but..........

if you turned the whole thing around 180 degrees, wouldn't it still face Mecca?if you pointed it toward the north or south poles? i mean, since we are on the surface of a globe, any two points on opposite sides of it will always be in direct line with each other.

Alec....Do you find it strange that you can't get a girl/boy to be alone with you very long(maybe 15 minutes tops)? That's no fun is it?...I know! Let's clean up your place! Start by throwing out all your glue and silver/gold paint cans and all those old rags.

maybe we are picking on Alec a bit too much here. The crescent derives from the appearance of the new moon that determines the end of Ramadan. It does not mean anything within Islam, but since fairly early on it has been used as a symbol of Islam in counterpoint to the cross and the star of David.

But there is nothing directional about it. It does not point to anything.

And redness does not mean anything either. The color of rebellion and war is traditionally black (esp. for Shi'a), or sometime green, the color of paradise, is used.

At most Murdoch appropriated the crescent for his own uses. The way he uses the crescent in incoherent to Muslim cultural sensibilities.

Hey, maybe the Islamofascists will consider it a poke in the eye? Has anyone thought to ask them what they think?

Perhaps Alec is right, and the cunning islamofascists trying to infiltrate our great land have already achieved their subtle yet evil goals on several other fronts. I note the following examples of mosques masquerading as something else on American soil:

This awesome. Nobody here can acknowledge that building the central feature of a mosque as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial is INAPPROPRIATE. Pere Ubu wants to know "What will happen?" Something has to happen? It is INAPPROPRIATE. It is a memorial to the terrorists.

- A memorial to the terrorists would be an obscene thing.

- A memorial that deliberately incorporated Islamic religious symbolism would be a beautiful, daring move to coopt the fanatics and make common cause with the 1.2 billion non-terrorist muslims on the planet.

- A memorial that inadvertantely offended the families of the victims by including a Islamic symbol would be unfortunate.

As far as I can tell, none of these options is the case. What we do know is that the mother of one of the victims has written to Tancredo and Malkin telling them that she is offended by their using the memorial to propogate their agenda of intolerance.

Seriously, seek help. Your repeated pleas here for dissenting voices to speak up is just sad -- as if there are tons of people reading your insanity and agreeing with you, but scared of the TBogg Supremacy to voice their support.

You know, looking back over that line, I'm surprised you could even type it. There are three c's in there, and we all know that the letter C is crescent-shaped and therefore responsible for the transmission of Islamocooties.

Someone better archive this thread, now, because the liklihood of that phrase ever being written again will depend on chimpanzees and typewriters. I mean, have you noticed that the King of Snark hasn't redesigned this website since he created it on an IBM Peanut, using WordStar? In fact, if TBogg had bothered to pick up a copy of Dreamweaver two years ago, I'm confident that we'd have won the White House in '04.

Alec, regarding your frustration at the lack of "dissentiing voices" to rise up and defend you from all the "20 watters": have you considered what pretty clearly looks to be the Occam's Razor solution here? And that is: it may be that *you* are actually the 20 watter. Think about it. I'm guessing that, as a thought exercise, if you accept this premise and think back on your life, it will probably explain a lot.

Mark B, you are clear that we're talking about a somewhat earlier incident in spanish history when the Moors controlled Spain for a really, really long time? And they don't any more? And in the intervening centuries they don't appear to have destroyed Spain?

Just making sure.

As to Mnemosyne's claim that a horizontal crescent is not a mihrab: Mihrabs are always three dimensional, both vertical and horizontal. Murdoch's just happens to be primarily in the horizontal dimensions, but that doesn't matter. As someone mentioned (was it Mneosyne?) Islam rejects any imputation that any symbol can in itself can be sacred.

Do you realize what you've just said here? You've just spent hours defending the proposition that something you see as a crescent is clearly, because of its resemblance to a symbol of Islam, consecrating the memorial to Islam, while at the same time you hold that the actual shape doesn't matter because Islam rejects the sacredness of symbols?

So, all of this commotion is over a crescent that lines up with Mecca - except that it doesn't? A 2 degree misalignment over the 6000+ mile distance between PA and the Middle East would result in the center of the crescent pointing to Sudan or Iran, wouldn't it?

Also, I'd hate to see what Alec thinks about the apporpriation of Arab and Islamic symbols in the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas. Speaking only for myself, despite the substantial amount of time I've spent there, I haven't had the slightest inclination of converting to Islam or committing a terrorist act, and only the occasional thought of lopping off my foreskin.

Good for "Anonymous : 7:18 PM." He recognizes that a gigantic Mecca oriented crescent would be a problem. Now all he needs to do is go verify that the central feature of Murdoch's plan is indeed a gigantic Mecca oriented crescent.

One of you has to have SOME curiosity. You can't ALL be flatliners. This isn't possible!

I've come back to check every half hour or so for, what five hours now, and all I have seen is excuse after excuse after excuse for why you shouldn't care what the facts are.

Jennifer is a math genius who thinks everything points to Mecca. NielsenHayden seems to speak for about a third of the commentators in thinking that any interest in the actual facts is a sign of dementia. Others stroke their chins as if they can't figure out in what sense it placing the central construct of a mosque on the crash site would be inappropriate (it violates the establishment clause for one). Some of you think that objecting to a Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site is interpretting ALL crescents as Islamic (Neilsen thinks it is interpretting east as Islamic). Not a one of you makes the slightest bit of sense.

Everyone here is self-lobotomized. You will find SOME excuse not to be interested in the truth, some reason to dismiss what you take to be an opposing viewpoint rather than let yourself look into it.

This can't be a one time thing. This must be your typical cognitive style. You are a bunch of backwards thinkers. You start with your presumptions and you lobotimize any thought process that could threaten your presumptions. You regard your own intelligence is your own worst enemy, and you attack it ruthlessly. The last thing you would ever let your minds do is follow reason and evidence.

If there is anybody who wants out, it is easy to do. You just start following reason and evidence.

I'm off for the evening, but I'll check back sometime tomorrow. Add to the list of excuses. It's awesome. And if there is any dissent, do say so. 100% lobotimized is such a mark of shame.

Mark B, you are clear that we're talking about a somewhat earlier incident in spanish history when the Moors controlled Spain for a really, really long time? And they don't any more? And in the intervening centuries they don't appear to have destroyed Spain?

Yeah, I got that, but I was responding to something in Alec's writings where he essentially concluded that the Spanish people 'surrendered' to the terrorists by voting out Aznar after the train attacks last year.

I didn't mean to obsure your point, which is perfectly valid. It's just that Rawl's concusion was mind-numbingly stupid, and it kind of pissed me off that he would say that. Opposing the idiots who talk tough about terrorism but do nothing is not the same as surrender. It's just the fact that the Spanish people woke up the fact that they were being duped and manipulated by fear and voted the bastards out. I look forward to the day that happens in our country.

Probably, there's no point, but this isn't true. The niche facing mecca is rectangular but could be any shape because the shape doesn't matter, so long as it doesn't become a distraction (being a "finger pointing to the -- moon"). Further, the crescent is not a symbol of Islam. It's a symbol of the Ottoman Empire, which Arab nationalists are not crazy about. It also has deep matriarchal meanings. There are conspiracy theories, unofficial histories and things derided by the mainstream that are very worth checking out. A crucial criterion here is relevance. We were just saying elsewhere that Niven and Heinlein and others like them made themselves stupider by segregating their spectacular minds to silly astrophysical math problems, allowing "libertarian" carelessness to sweep away real problems like poverty or militarism. They saw intelligence not as something that could wildly infect everything and help society but something that esoterically entertained and had its place (and yes, they imagined that they were very irreconcilable to this view personally). Rawls is another excellent illustration of this neutralization of a good mind by stovepiping or ostrich (or rabbit!) holing it in silly unimportant rabbit or wild goose chases.

yes, kei & yuri, and of course it's a pretty threatened (aka strong) ego that causes such stovepiping of reality by one's natural intelligence. a healthy ego knows its petty place in the overall scheme of things and has the humility and common sense to recognize that it has not somehow stumbled onto some grand scheme of things THAT NOBODY ELSE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT or thinks bears any resemblance to the real world. lord knows what happened during this poor fellah's ego development.

To have some better understanding try this thought experiment. What if you were visiting a holocaust museum and noticed that at a certain time of day the light through some windows created what looked like a swastika on a wall. You would probably be offended, entertain the possibility that it wasn't accidental, and share your discovery with other people, expecting them to want to change the window layout to avoid that swastika.

It probably wouldn't matter to you that not everyone discerned a swastika in the shadows and light, or that the swastika was lopsided and imperfect, or that the swastika is an ancient symbol not solely nazi, or that it's inclusion as an ephemera in a holocaust museum could somehow be construed as an artistic statement. It might not even matter to you that families of holocaust victims didn't care.

Sorry to trot out nazis, but a basic difference I think is that some on the right really do see the fight against Islamic terrorists as a life or death struggle against pure evil, on par with the worst the last century offered up. Once you cross that threshold, the rest of the apparent craziness can be readily derived.

"Are you guys going to be as oblivious as that? If so, you are going to be awfully surprised when this thing gets withdrawn."-posted by Alec Rawls : 10:45 AM

Hey Al:

You shouldn't refer to yourself as a 'thing', man.

'Come on, you're better than that, dammit!

But if you *are* being 'withdrawn', I'd love to know how you're gonna' be jammed back up into your mother's womb, assuming the old dear is still with us.

The 'error theory' comes full circle (it couldn't really 'come full crescent', now could it).

Seems to me that a similar kind of carping occurred when the Viet Nam Memorial proposal first saw the light of day: disrespectful, disgraceful, a black granite gash in the ground. (No Google map coordinates to confirm what the hell way it was facing, though.)

Cut to the chase: the memorial was built and has been, dare I say it, a 'mecca' for reconciliation and healing for, not only, the brave men and women who gave their lives in that tragic conflict and the grieving families that they left behind, but also for the American people as a whole.

Al, why not try gettin' off that heavily susidized ass of yours, get out into the world and learn somethin', will 'ya kid?

(You could always send us the Google map coordinates of your travels.)

"If there is anybody who wants out, it is easy to do. You just start following reason and evidence."

And then, you follow them straight to MS Paint and the Great Circle calculator, start counting pixels, and VOILA!

You've got yourself a head full of crazles.

(P.S. THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE? Are you fucking kidding me? So if the trees were laid out in two lines, intersecting each other right in the center (like the symbol for the Red Cross), would that violate the Establishment Clause too? What about if it kinda sorta looked like a yin-yang symbol? Or what if, from space, the monument looked like a bindi (you know, the dot some Indians wear on their foreheads to denote... something or other)?

You must really be worried about a muscle tear, because you're REALLY stretching here.

(Ren drifts around the room) Heh...heh...heh...they think I'm CRAZY. But I know better. It is not *I* who am crazy. It is not I who am MAD! Didn'tcha hear 'em? Didn'tcha see the CROWDS?(Ren holds up bar of soap)Oh my beloved ice cream bar...how I love to lick your creamy center! HOOOWWWWWW...(bites soap)...and your oh-so-nutty chocolate covering! You're not like the others...you like the same things I do! Waxed paper...boiled football leather...dog breath...We're not hitchhiking anymore! We're RIDING!

"I'm a psychiatric social worker who often works with individuals with fixed delusions. To them, their perceptions and interpretations of events around them make perfect sense, and everyone else is crazy, irrational, ignorantly unconcerned or part of the conspiracy. Sorry, Mr. Rawls, but I'm getting a pretty strong sense of the delusional disorder from you.# posted by sarah : 1:09 PM"

And now you are exhibiting delusions of grandeur, Alec. Sarah called it this afternoon - get some psychiatric help, buddy boy.

It probably wouldn't matter to you that not everyone discerned a swastika in the shadows and light, or that the swastika was lopsided and imperfect, or that the swastika is an ancient symbol not solely nazi, or that it's inclusion as an ephemera in a holocaust museum could somehow be construed as an artistic statement. It might not even matter to you that families of holocaust victims didn't care.

I think we may have reached the place for my favorite political joke.

Bob's analyst wants to give him a rorschach test. Shows him a blob. "Sex," says Bob. Shows him another blob. "Sex," says Bob. Shows him a third blob. Bob flushes, adjusts his zipper and says "sex."

Bob, his analyst says, I think you may be obsessed with sex.

Excuse me, Bob says, indignant. I'm not the one who keeps dirty pictures in my office.

I think before you start a, um, crusade about the mutant swastika no-one else sees on the wall, you might want to ponder Bob's story.

Alec Rawls, I've tried, but I just can't give credence to your premise. It's a beautiful memorial, and I'd like to see it someday.

You say you want evidence that someone among the commenters is willing to consider your premise, but the only evidence you'll accept is complete agreement.

Alec, I disagree with you. Guess what: the sun's still gonna come up tomorrow. You can't bully me into agreement by maligning my intelligence. I don't feel any more need to debate you point by point than I would with someone who insisted that the Grand Canyon was created instantaneously by the hand of God, or that people and dinosaurs frolicked together on Day Four. It's like you telling me that exactly 1,985,111 angels can dance on the head of a pin, and if I can't prove empirically that you're wrong, then you must be right and I must be willfully obtuse. There's no insight I can gain from such a discussion.

As someone who grew up Muslim (now athiest...long story), and who has actually *been inside* a mosque (or masjid, as they are more properly called,) let me enlighten Mr. Rawls that there is no crescent you 'pray into.'

Praying into something would in fact be offensive, as it would suggest you are praying *to* that thing. In fact, when my family prayed together at home (which we did most of the time, only going to the masjid once on Fridays) we took care to take the paintings off the eastern wall of our house first, so that we would not be 'praying into' them.

As for the assertion that the majority of Muslims in America are Wahabbis, I'd really like to see his proof of that. (I could be wrong, but somehow I doubt that's true.) It really seems laughable to me. Most Muslims I know are either converts of many ethnicities who are of the Sunni sect (kind of like the Muslim version of W.A.S.P.s) or immigrants who follow whatever cultural traditions of the country the came from, be it Bosnia, Morroco, Ghana, Palestine, Afghanistan, China, India, or Iran. (Yes, in New Mexico we are quite the melting pot.)

Wahabbism is *not* one of the four major schools of Islam, and is *not* respected in the United States. There is one Wahabbi family where I live, and their views are *not* respected.

Islam is not a monolith. Did you know only like 20 percent of Muslims are even Arab? Most Muslims are from Asia, places like Malaysia, China, Japan, and Thailand. (Although to be fair most of any group is probably from Asia due to the size of the continent and population density.)

All Muslims are not out to destroy you. Especially American Muslims.

Who exactly do you think is behind this plot to built 'the world's largest mosque' at this memorial anyway?

Alec is (sadly) correct. I just looked at the pixel meter (Linux)and not only am i aligned with the flight 93 crash site and Mecca, but one face of the Great Pyramid too. Suddenly i have an urge to pray 5 times a day, make a haj, and i seem to need to give money to beggars!Help someone!?

If it helps any, I'm willing to concede that a terrorist who is as plainly mentally ill as Mr Rawls is might see the same sort of symbolism Mr Rawls sees and might come to Mr Rawls' same conclusions and feel that his own mental illness is fully validated.

On the other hand, it's pretty clear to me at least that Mr Rawls would be finding *some* kind of offensive symbolism here no matter what the design was, and I'd guess the same could be said of our specific hypothetical terrorist doppelganger.

Mr Rawls, if you feel the design is a problem, and you feel the families would change their minds about it if only they understood, then why not submit a better design? Go talk to the people in charge of the memorial and offer them your completely-symbolism-free coincidence-and-misinterpretation-proof memorial design.

If you can come up with something better, I'd advise you to focus your efforts there. Why not give it a try? You might accomplish something beautiful, even by your standards.

Or you might learn that it's much harder than you thought, avoiding all misinterpretations the human mind can come up with, especially a delusional mind devoted to a particular already-mystical philosophy and mindset anyway.

Alec, you're so close, but no cigar (Clue 1: think Bill and Monica.) You've realized that the true enemy is the feminization of the West. Now think about the crescent shape, or more precisely, two crescent shapes. Do you see that your obsession with Mecca is (Clue 2: watch for it) skirting the true issue?

2. A niche design in the middle of a Muslim prayer rug, pointed toward Mecca during worship.

(like this image from some sort of Mount Holyoke College thing I found while Googling. The mihrab is the POINTY NON-CRESCENT-SHAPED part at the top of the rug.)

If the designer of this memorial really wanted to make it look like a traditional mihrab, they would be better off making it shaped like a long door with a pointed vault or arch at the top rather than a crescent.

Seriously, do a google image search of 'mihrab.' I count seven on the first page alone that are more triangular than crescent shaped, one that is rectangular shaped, and one that is not a mihrab.

Do a search for 'mihrab prayer rug' and 11 of the results are distinctly non-crescent shaped.

You can complain all you want about the supposed group think, but you are at least definitely wrong (or at least misinformed) on this point. A mihrab is not really much of a crescent.

If I am wrong, please correct me with evidence indicating otherwise. I am certianly no Islamic scholar or anything.

I'm a designer and the partial circle shape makes perfect sense to me.

Have ya ever done a project where you need to please a large group of people? Simplicity and basics win out almost every time.

So a large plane crashes into the ground. What's the most basic visual symbol that could be associated with such a horrendous violent crash? A plaque? Statues? A model plane? Nope. It's the impact itself. The hole made by those evil enough to take over a plane and those courageous enough to stop that evil. Lots of symbolism.

As far as it pointing to Mecca? I don't buy it. The plane was turned East after it was taken over ( http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/attack/flight93.html ) Moreover, I'd bet geography and sunlight was taken into consideration when making the final placements.

"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion." (Arnold H. Glasow)Perhaps Mr Rawls has been in the echo chamber too long, and wonders where all the true believers are out here. Reality is a bitch, Mr Rawls, not a weak-willed pushover easy to manipulate for simple needs (yes, I'm repulsed by your ideas about breeders).But let's test your paranoid theory the only way possible: what proof do you have that Murdoch has hatched such an elaborate and cruel hoax (but still missing the mark by 2 degrees)? Not conjecture, proof. If none, please find a more interesting conspiracy. For example, study the endlessly elaborate theories about the face on Mars and what it meant for all of the universe, before the high resolution photographs from NASA shut that down cold. Those intricately worked out, yet unanchored in reality theories remind me of yours for some reason, only yours don't have the fun bits. Maybe it is just the times we live in.

I have never posted a comment before in my 2 years of blog reading. However, this was the most fun I have ever had reading a blog. I fell off my chair when I read this:

Others stroke their chins as if they can't figure out in what sense it placing the central construct of a mosque on the crash site would be inappropriate (it violates the establishment clause for one).

The Establishment Clause!!! I wonder if Senator Hatch will inquire of Sam Alito as to whether putting a grove of trees in a semi-circular shape, that may face Mecca if you use MS Paint just the right way, in the middle of PA to memoralize victims of 9/11 violates the establishment clause.

You forgot how the earthquake that started the Tsunami changed the earth's rotational axis. The crescent is facing the point it needed to before that time.

Be sure to tie one pant leg up when Alec enters the room. Get with the ceremony. He's mason material and the chosen one, you just refuse to see big pitcure. He knows his ceremonies and has with that the intuitive blessings of a different sight.

Alec, alec, alec...You've been provided with plenty of reasons as to why your theory doesn't hold any ground, yet have not managed to refute a single naysayer.Here's a nice summary (and I'm sure I've missed some):*The crescent shape is by no means exclusive to Islam (or religion in general) as an icon*The crescent shape isn't even that special of an icon to Islam*Your methodology and the tools you used to calculate the alignment of the crescent to Mecca are laughable, and woefully inaccurate. Nevertheless, even by your measurements, the crescent does not align with Mecca (it's hundreds of miles off, in fact).*Even IF we posit that the crescent shape was deliberately chosen as part of a conspiracy to include Islamic iconography in this memorial, everyone but you is unclear as to what will transpire as a result - and you're not enlightening us as to that fact.*The memorial design has already been improved - and in fact was chosen by - family members of the victims of 9/11. You know, the people this memorial is meant to honour in the first place.

Now, do us a favour and address even ONE of those points, before you start admonishing others for refusing to think critically, or accusing them of ignoring the facts.

Wow yer dumb. You seem still unable to realize that jennifer is in fact right. see I hate to break it to you, but the earth is round. specifically its a sphere. That means that no matter where you draw a cresent on a map it will point to mecca in some direction. It would have been funnier if you loons had claimed it look like a bleeding vagina, and therefore was part of the femberal(feel free to use that one) movement.

Alec,A crescent that people face into to face Mecca is the central feature around which every mosque is built.

I have been to enough mosques to know that most mosques don't have a crescent facing Mecca. Muslims are supposed to face Mecca when praying, so mosques are built in a way so that it is obvious to those inside which direction to face when praying. There doesn't need to be a crescent involved at all. In fact most mosques don't have a crescent. The crescent was not originally used in assiciation with islam. It only came to be associated with islam after the Ottoman empire.

this is just piling on, I know, but I had to jump in to be on record as part of what will surely be an award-winning comment thread. Thanks to all, you're too many to mention, for the best 40 minutes I've wasted with comments since ever.

Excuse me, Mr Rawles, Christian left here. Crescents are not evil, triangles are not gay, women are indeed human. God made all things and all things God made are good. Speak not of the torture tree, not in America, not in these dark days.

Can't just ONE of you go to my posts and verify that the Mecca orientation of the crescent is REAL, so that those few of you who think that MIGHT matter can have reason to investigate further.

I did. It's BS. Not only does the calculation you claim you made result in an orientation out by 2 degrees, even to get that close you had to choose the "tips" of the crescent with due care. Specifically, you decide the northern tip was the end of the inner wall, rather than (as would seem more sensible) the northern limit of the maples. Instead you decided the wall was the northern tip because ... well, it's funniest in the original: "If you print out a screen-shot of the PDF, you can see by tinkering with a compass that the inner of these walls lies on circle of the crescent. The crescent tip has to be located on this circle or a perpendicular projecting through the midpoint between the crescent tips will not pass through the center of the circle and the crescent will not be symmetrically bisected. Thus the upper crescent tip logically becomes the tip of the inner wall." Yeah, because, that's on a circle you drew with a compass on a print-out of a pdf graphic. Please god tell me you're not an engineer.

Using your highly scientific method, I drew a line from the crescent tips marked by actual trees. I then bisected that line. It neatly passed through the centre of the circle and bisected the crescent of maples. It didn't point in the same direction as yours, so I'm guessing it didn't point to Mecca.

So tell us, Mr Rawls, because I have no interest in checking in detail myself (not being a loon) - if you calculate the bisection from the northern limit of the trees, where does the crescent point then? At the crash site perhaps?

(ii) This symbol somehow consecrates the ground in a fashion equivalent to a mosque and therefore 'plants' Islam on US territory.

(iii) The two assertions above are confirmed by the crescent's orientation toward Mecca.

(iv) Given the above, incorporating this element into the design is inappropriate

I'm having some trouble with Alec's reasoning. Maybe, because I am in the lower percentile of intelligence, I'm a little slow and need his help to illuminate my confusion.

SYMBOLOGYFirst there is the issue of whether the crescent is an Islamic symbol. I know that Islam is not monolithic and so the Muslim view on this might vary. The crescent certainly has historical associations with Islam, but is the crescent specifically religious? Mainstream Islam, I understand, does not accept any icon or color as sacred to Islam, as worshipping symbolic or material things is against the monotheistic spirit (similar to the second commandment of the Jewish and Christian faiths, though more fundamentalist in its interpretation).

Osama Bin-Laden and his closest followers have been identified as members of the Salafi (i.e., Wahhabi) sect. This is, so I'm told, a puritanical sect that has some rather peculiar ideas regarding images. A belief in charm symbols is frowned upon and photographs of beings with a soul are forbidden, for example. That said, Osama has permitted himself to be filmed and pictured, so maybe he isn't a particularly devout Salafi. It does, however, cast doubt on whether he or other Wahhabist jihadists would regard an icon such as the crescent as having major religious significance.

I do find it interesting that according to the Wikipedia entry on Wahhabism/Salafism, supplications at graves are considered contrary to Islam, as is the practice of erecting elaborate monuments over graves. This would suggest that any scheme to incorporate an Islamic symbol into a monument over a memorial site where many, including Islamic 'martyrs', died would be contrary to Islam and an insult to God. Now again, Osama might not be overly fussed about this, but if so, then he may well be in a minority amongst his sect.

So, is the crescent religious to Wahhabists/Salafists such as Osama Bin-Laden? Well, I'd say not given the information at my disposal, unless someone can shed some more light on this.

ARCHITECTUREThis brings us to the business of whether the crescent consecrates the ground or somehow 'plants' Islam within it. Here, I have to profess my ignorance. I do not know how a mosque is consecrated or what ceremonies must be performed, but I do know that a mosque would not permit shod people to enter the prayer hall and would ideally have a place for ablutions to ensure cleanliness within its precincts. I do not see any provision for this in the memorial plan which, in the absence of other defining features of a mosque (Alec's definition of a mihrab having been roundly refuted), leads me to dismiss the assertion that this is a significant piece of Islamic architecture equivalent to building a mosque.

ORIENTATIONAlec's technique for determining the orientation of the crescent appears to be shoddy at best. However, it would be interesting to check the veracity of his claim. Exactly how far out from 'true-Mecca' is the crescent, using tools more finely calibrated than MS Paint? And how close would the facing have to be to definitively face or not face Mecca for the purpose of worship?

Is there an Imam around who could answer this last question? I suspect that this does not strictly have to be an exact plotting and most Moslems are allowed a little 'wiggle room' on this, but it would be nice to confirm.

If there is some 'wiggle room', it make's Alec's assertion less convincing, as it vastly increases the chance that the orientation is a coincidence.

This is not, of course, taking into account the topography of the site. If the crescent is not level but on an incline it makes the 'facing Mecca' assertion seem even less likely.

APPROPRIATENESSWe finally come to the issue of whether the crescent is appropriate. This is a highly subjective--i.e., moral and aesthetic--decision. We each have to decide this on our own. But as it is apparent that the victim's families like the memorial design and that it is not clear even whether the crescent is a religious symbol, the issue boils down to:

(a) Whether the viewer is offended by the presence of the crescent, and

(b) When their political correctness should influence the final design.

God forbid that we let political correctness rule what we should or shouldn't do. If the families like it then who are we to disagree with them?

Ah, I notice robw does a fine demolition of Alec's orientation theory by showing how the data has been manipulated to get the result Alec wants.

This puts the final nail in the coffin, I believe. Unless Alec can come up with something spellbindingly convincing, he is clearly a mooncalf and his assertions are the twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man mental.

We are laughing at him. Yea, even from here in England. He is the poster child for loopy American fundamentalists.

People here seem to be under the impression that a half mile wide crescent, oriented on Mecca, can occur by random chance.

You seem to have the same concept of what "random chance" means as creationists. When an east-south-east bound airplane crashes into the ground, the chances that a crescent-shaped debris pattern will form and that the center of the arc will "point" towards the middle east are close to 100%.

Finally, mosques do not incorporate crescents into their physical architecture. Look at the Dome of the Rock and the Blue Mosque. Are they "crescent shaped"? No. Their walls are angular.

As to Mnemosyne's claim that a horizontal crescent is not a mihrab: Mihrabs are always three dimensional, both vertical and horizontal. Murdoch's just happens to be primarily in the horizontal dimensions, but that doesn't matter. As someone mentioned (was it Mneosyne?) Islam rejects any imputation that any symbol can in itself can be sacred. Thus there is great flexibility in the way that typical mosque elements are put together. No particular arrangement can be held to be religiously demanded.

Alec claims that because the memorial incorporates a crescent shape pointed at Mecca, that it must be a mihrab, and therefore the whole thing is a mosque.

But, next, he acknowledges that there is nothing special about the crescent shape, mosque-design-wise, and it's not pointing directly at Mecca. However, since it is a mosque, those minor deviations don't matter, and are probably just misdirection anyway!

As to Mnemosyne's claim that a horizontal crescent is not a mihrab: Mihrabs are always three dimensional, both vertical and horizontal. Murdoch's just happens to be primarily in the horizontal dimensions, but that doesn't matter. As someone mentioned (was it Mneosyne?) Islam rejects any imputation that any symbol can in itself can be sacred. Thus there is great flexibility in the way that typical mosque elements are put together. No particular arrangement can be held to be religiously demanded.

Taking a step back from the immediate discussion, and answering the question that Alec refused to answer: What will happen if the memorial is built in the shape of a crescent that points to Mecca if you squint at the pixels just right?

What will most likely happen is that some whackos, egged on by the right-wing screed machine, will figure that it is their duty to remove that crescent.

Look for the headlines a couple of years from now about how all the trees were cut down overnight.

And when it happens, I dearly hope that Mr. Rawls and Ms. Malkin and their ilk are hauled into civil court to recoup damages for encouraging the vandalism.

"If there is some 'wiggle room', it make's Alec's assertion less convincing, as it vastly increases the chance that the orientation is a coincidence."

The central tenet of Islam is obedience to God. I think that this means, in this context, that each Muslim should try his very best to face exactly toward Mecca. Someone laying down a prayer rug has traditionally had one set of tools with which to determine his position: the designers of the mosque, a different and more thorough one. (There's more that one reason that Moslems dominated astronomy during Europe's Middle Ages.) There are today digital azaar clocks that will tell a believer exactly when to pray based on his longitude, and probably give him the precise direction of Mecca using GPS technology. (Note: I don't know that this GPS link is available. If it isn't: I hereby patent the idea and don't make me pry your grubby little fingers off of it, you Google corporate types. Aren't you rich enough?) If that is the standard for orientation for the casual believer, we can assume that the standard for mosque construction is at least equal to it--missing by 2 degrees therefore won't cut it.

And, noting that there is no distinct sacred precinct or lavatory facilities, and the shoes thing, that's good. Also, no division between men and women. No precinct wall or other divider isolating the sacred space. I've already held forth on the fact that the cross-slope is, if not utterly incompatible with the floor of a mosque, at least would make it uncomfortable to use and is, by the way, fixable using a bulldozer, which is notably not employed. By the way, the design proposes filling this central area with wildflowers, does it not? This plan does not suggest that the designers intend the space to be used five times a day by crowds of worshippers. And, did anyone notice that the half-circle element in the mosque that denotes the direction of Mecca actually faces opposite Mecca? One prays into the half-circle, not out of it.

We've had our fun, here, and I would, indeed, think that building a mosque (or any religious house) on this site would be improper. Reaching way back into my graduate architecture school days, when such Platonic theories were in vogue, if the mosque is an idealized building "type" that has standard elements that can be abstracted to accommodate immediate circumstance, there should be some conventional or (in this case, perhaps, divine) catalogue of the parts and their display, a set of rules for the game, and pieces with which to play it. I don't see that Mr. Rawls has come close to surveying mosques world-wide or otherwise seeking out the prescription for mosque design, a prescription that obviously exists and which is consulted by mosque architects on taking up the design task, let alone comparing that prescription with the Flight 93 Memorial. In other words, Mr. Rawls isn't pursuing scholarship. (Scholarship is what separates Albert Einstein from some smelly guy hassling you for spare change at the crosswalk and going on about how time is maleable.) My thought, here, non-scholarly but professionally-informed, is that, as a mosque, the design is so far abstracted and minimalist (as noted above, key elements are missing from what I take to be basic mosque design, and other elements present that would be absent in a "typical" mosque design) as to not be a mosque at all. I could be wrong, and this is all intuitive but based on experience and training in architecture and architectural history, but not in Islamic architecture, but without being driven off of this position by real scholarship and careful research, I'd wager I'm on the firm ground.

sure, it might be 2 degrees off now. but the islamofascists have figured out how to influence tectonic shift. with one mighty shout of "allah akbar" the plates will shift, perfectly alligning pennsylvania with mecca, thereby ushering in the the beginning of 1000 years of islamic rule of rural pennsylvania. it's so obvious.

Since many mathematical concepts originated in the Islamic world, if it wasn't for them, Alec wouldn't even be able to do his little calculations. He should foreswear all use of Arabic words like "algebra" "algorithm" and "azimuth". In fact to be on the safe side, he should avoid mathematics altogether, it might be an Islamofascist plot to brainwash him. I can't believe he's let this slip by.

Forget your keyboard! The U.S. Government itself is endorsing Islamo-fascism in its 2 cent stamp.Millions of innocent Americans will start using that stamp on Monday because of the diabolical rate increase! MILLIONS!!!!!!!!!!!

See, there's your mistake: calling whatever mental processes produced his fulimnations "reasoning." I've seen better "reasoned" claims made by LaRocuhites defending their claim that Al Gore was an agent of the British Crown...

I'm surprised fewer people aren't agreeing with Rawls. It seems obvious to me that the crescent is actually the Islamofascist version of the Stargate, and that once completed it will disgorge millions of stealth-terrorists as they teleport over from their secret training grounds in the bowels of 160-Miles-Away-From-Mecca. And then you'll all be sorry you didn't listen to the ravings of a madman, I promise you.

The mirhab has nothing to do with a crescent. The mirahb in my mosque is a table (rectangular).

The crescent is an historical symbol, but it has nothing to do with Islamic iconography because (as other have pointed out) Islam is iconoclastic.

As a symbol, however, the crescent is highly associated with Mary the mother of Jesus (that's right, muslims believe Jesus and MAry existed). As such you may happily find the crescent used over and over again in Christian images of Mary.

So, in the end, the monument becomes a symbol of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

If Mr. Alex has a problem with this he should contact the catholic church, not the muslims of the world.

Perhaps I should make that use of the crescent moon more clear:follow this link to a sample image of Mary. The crescent moon supports her. the text reads:

"The crescent moon identifies this Madonna painting as Immaculata, the woman never wavering in her attachment to God, contrasting the waxing and waning moon symbol of human gullibility and inconsistency."

You can find similar images all throughout the history of the catholic church's iconography, right up to today.

Note that this painting is in the Vatican.

Mr. Rawls may wish to inquire into this iconography further and contact the architect to see if he is a Catholic. Perhaps this memorial will be an abomination of the memory of the Holy Virgin Mary.

I believe that, given the love of icons in the Catholic church, and the dislike of icons in Islam, Occam's Razor would dictate that the crescent is not Islamic but Catholic.

I've been following this discussion closely (completely shattering my New Year's "no blogs, get some sleep" resolution), and was content to merely read, think, and enjoy. But the 2¢ stamp thing really blew me out of my complacency. I think Alec really does have a point. I am running down to my corner now with a compass to see in which direction the mailbox (which is RECTANGULAR -- just like a mirhab) is oriented. My god, the U.S. Government itself is in on this. Thanks, Alec.

I'm just curious whether Alec has bothered to think about what the memorial will look like in actually, from the perspective of people actually observing it. You, know, on the ground, not somehow floating in the air above it and viewing it as if it were a 2 dimensional graphic.

Vanessa: Thanks for looking up examples of mihrabs. Many are arch topped, as you found. Quite a few are also crescent topped. See for example the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba. You are also right that most American Muslims are not Wahabbists, like bin Laden, but as I said, 80% of the mosques are. They are all funded by the Saudis, who have used their oil money to spread Islamofascism all over the world. You are also right that Muslims would never pray to a mihrab. It gives the direction for prayer. If they are in front of the mihrab, they face into it to face Mecca.

Larkspur, I did not insult your intelligence. I insulted the intelligence of the people who had been commenting. More precisely, I insulted their backwards use of intelligence, trying to find excuses to evade reason and evidence rather than following reason and evidence. I stated several times my confidence that many of the non-commenters must be able to comprehend some of the obvious things that the commentators were denying, like that it is inappropriate to use the central feature of a mosque as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial. I was just trying to goad these people into speaking up.

RobW (6:05 AM) actually went and looked at the orientation of the crescent in Murdoch's Crescent of Embrace site plans. Right on. He notices that the upper crescent tip is not completely obvious and prefers a different way of defining it than I used (using the last red maple on top as the upper crescent tip, just as the last red maple on the bottom forms the lower crescent tip). Rob then describes the result:

"I drew a line from the crescent tips marked by actual trees. I then bisected that line. It neatly passed through the centre of the circle and bisected the crescent of maples. It didn't point in the same direction as yours, so I'm guessing it didn't point to Mecca."

Just one more step to take Rob. Defining the upper crescent tip as you did makes the crescent point CLOSER to Mecca. It is off by less than one degree. The reason I didn't use your crescent tip isn't because I was cherry picking to try to find the definition of the crescent that points most closely to Mecca, but because your method does not logically define a geometrical crescent. To define a crescent, the crescent tips have to be on the circle that the crescent partly inscribes. That moves the crescent tip out to the end of the inner wall, as anyone who examines the site plan can comprehend. (Percyprune thought RobW's accusation that I had cherry picked the upper crescent tip was "the final nail in the coffin." I guess my actual failure to cherry-pick means the coffin is unnailed, right Percyprune?)

So here we are. Somebody finally brought back confirmation that I am telling you the truth when I say that Murdoch's gigantic crescent is oriented on Mecca. Yahoo. Now we can go on to the next step.

You have to be curious, right Larkspur, and the other not totally brain-dead readers of this site? If Murdoch put a half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent, you've got to be curious what else he put in the memorial, don't you?

I think you all know what an Islamic crescent and star flag looks like. There is a star, centered exactly on the bisector of the crescent, out towards the mouth of the crescent.

If you look at Murdoch's plans, you will see that he placed a copse of trees almost exactly in the place of star on a crescent and star flag.

It is little off, just as the Mecca orientation of his giant crescent is a little off. The bisector of the crescent actually passes through the top third of the copse of trees, not the center of the copse of trees. But then you can go and look closely and see what is contained in the upper third of the copse of trees. You will find that there is a separate upper section of memorial wall, centered precisely on the bisector of the huge red crescent, placing it exactly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag.

This is the true focus of the memorial. The lower section of memorial wall, containing forty glass blocks inscribed with the names of our murdered heroes, is literally off to the side. It is the upper section of the memorial wall that is integral with his larger structure. Who could it be a memorial to?

Will somebody go verify the centering of the upper section of memorial wall on the bisector of Murdoch's giant crescent and report it back here for your lazier compatriots? Then we can look at what Murcdoch did next. (There are about 25 things he did, every one of them as completely verifiable as the Mecca orientation of his giant crescent.)

You up to it RobW? Percyprune? Anybody? My analysis, and links to all the relevant information, is here.

P.S. to Brian C.B. You're on the right track. Compile a full list of typical mosque features. You will only find two elements of Murdoch's entire design that are not readily interprettable as typical mosque features, on the same epic scale as his half mile wide mihrab. The other two elements are typical mosque adjuncts: "memorial mosque" elements, relating to Murdoch's memorial to the terrorists.

Alec-I'm a landscape architect. And, after having a look at the design for myself, I have to say I'm impressed with your creativity, if also somewhat concerned over your grasp of reality (or lack thereof). First of all, it's not a crescent. It's an arc. There's a difference. Look it up. And it doesn't point to Mecca. It almost points to Mecca. Like the other commenter said, if they had wanted it to point to Mecca, I can guarantee you, they wouldn't have missed by two degrees. So you need a bit of a fudge factor to convert some interesting geometries into a dark consipracy. I have to grant you, though, that screaming, "hey look, there's an almost-crescent that almost points to Mecca!" is not nearly as emotionally satisfying as "hey look, there's a crescent that points to Mecca!" Unfortunately, the latter is an inaccurate characterization of the design. For a guy who professes to be concerned with the facts, you are, as far as I can see, not so much.

I don't like letting the raving Loony Tune having the last word, so I'll just ineptly sum up what everyone else said: Rawls, you're nuts. In the words of Woody Allen, I'm not sure your spinal cord reaches your brain.

As was the Liberal Avenger. There is an amusing comment thread in which people started dredging up examples of other crescents and concluded, as I recall, that there was a vast Canadian-Islamo-Fascist conspiracy reaching its tentacles into our once-great, once-Christian nation.

Once again, the crescent doesn't matter. Neither do the other 25 or however many elements with which you are obsessed.

It's a memorial of the people who died on Flight 93 approved by the families of the people who died on Flight 93. They noticed the crescent and discussed it. They concluded, as have we, that it doesn't matter. They are aware of your delusional theory and do NOT subscribe to it. Neither do we.

Your repeating that it's an islamo-fascist memorial is just delusional blather. It is time to get some psychiatric help, buddy boy.

P.S. to Brian C.B. You're on the right track. Compile a full list of typical mosque features.

I'm not on any track at all, Mr. Rawls. I am suggesting that you, if you're serious, ought to carefully evaluate and publish a comparison between iconic or typical (in the Platonic sense) mosque design and the Flight 93 memorial. You're in Palo Alto? ("Stanford Review" is associated with Leland Stanford, Jr., University, I'd guess.) Well, take transportation of your choice over to the University of California's architecture school and discuss your effort with representatives of the lanscape architecture and architecture faculty, as well as any historian of Islamic and Middle Eastern architecture the school might have. Be very polite, because, of course, they'll be predisposed to think a discussion of such an outrageous proposition as yours as a waste of their time. I'm sure you won't let that possibility stop you. If you want to pursue your analysis further you're going to need something more than MSPaint, and the students at Cal should be available for hire and able to use more sophisticated software or to even build a scale model similar to the one used in the competition.

Why go to this trouble? Because you'll not be taken seriously unless you act seriously. There are professional journals for the ASLA and AIA who would publish a serious criticism of the Flight 93 iconography. If you hint that the design's similarity to a mosque (such as you're able to demonstrate) is deliberate, rather than accidental, and that the jury has somehow been compromised, you'll be dismissed with no consideration as some sort of lunatic. (Pun intended.) And, by the way, if the only thing you've got turns out to be some kind of near-miss alignment to Mecca, you're screwed twice. Once, because it's a near miss in a word of incredible GIS precision: Twice, because, why should we surrender an orientation to a religion when it otherwise makes sense within the memorial as thing bearing secular meaning? Make the monument less beautiful because we're facing something thousands of miles over the horizon? Jeez, talking about handing the terrorists a victory.

As for missing mosque elements, I'm not seeing some basic ones I associate with "mosque," such as "roof" and "level floor." And, there is no "Islamic flag" that I know of, other than black or green banners.

Notice that the crescent and star you mention as Islamic appear on the flag of Turkey, a state that was created as a militantly secular one and that expressly rejected Islamic trappings. On the other hand, the crescent and star do not appear on the flag of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom that draws its legitimacy from its Islamic character

"If you look at Murdoch's plans, you will see that he placed a copse of trees almost exactly in the place of star on a crescent and star flag."

Almost exactly?

Here's the symbol:

http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa060401a.htm

Here's the design:

http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/148/5959/640/Redesign%2C%20bowl.jpg

"almost" is a pretty big qualifier of "exactly here. The position of the copse of trees in no way suggests the position of a star in the "star-and-crescent" symbol, except to those who see equally compelling indications of symbolsim in the way birds alight on powerlines, Mother Teresa's face appears on a cinnamon bun, or the Virgin Mary's face appears on a grilled cheese sandwich.

Of course, Alec then demurs:

"It is [a]little off just as the Mecca orientation of his giant crescent is a little off."

A little off indeed. Alec, I hope you are not in any profession where accuracy, symmetry of design, graphic layout, or other such skills are required.

And BTW --- What significance do the ponds have in your theory that Murdoch has created a terrorist memorial? Why haven't you mentioned them? Or are they irrelevant if they don't support your argument?

Mr. Rawls, sir, what about my comment that the crescent is more readily identifiable with the Virgin Mary than with Islam?

Also note: the flag of the prophet (PBUH)was black, and black and green are the colors of many Islamic nations. Only the Turks use red, I believe (the color red is important to your argument, yes?)

Also, is there Arabic in the memorial? As I'm sure you know the Holy Qur'an is written in Arabic and is the official language of Islam. As the living document of our faith there would be no mosque without the language of God written down (such as the shaha'da).

This is no mosque you are describing sir, and I ask that you desist from inciting people who are ignorant of Islam. Many are easily led, and you seem to be a willing leader by means of misinformation.

Maybe I've missed it Alec, but you seem to continue to duck justifying your statement about including the terrorist in the commemoration by using 44 blocks. This is a major point you make and seems to be just plain wrong.

Maybe this guy really is sitting in his house in upper Sandusky and really believes that any of this shit matters. Maybe his name is really Harold Barnaby and he’s writing just to taunt any liberals who happen by. Or maybe Harold is a liberal who thinks he’s baiting wingers for fun and that this thread is "cover". Or maybe Harold is really a woman named Harriet who works in a cubicle for the CIA and is paid to manage a number of fake web sites intended to net wingers who have militia connections, as part of the aged but ongoing covert Terry Nichols investigation. Maybe Harriet is really an androgyne alien named Pat who works in an FBI cubicle next to a woman named Harriet, whose task is to trap wingers with sex hangups and liberals who might have connections to militant Arabs/eco-terrorists/liberal revolutionary college profs. Maybe alien Pat has gotten tired of doing all the work and has quietly done what many black ops artists do: developed his own asset, or even assets, named Rasheed, Myringia, and Chloe Bane who are currently writing fake blogs in Pat's name via satellite uplink from Tampa and deepest India, respectively. Maybe Pat is really Yevgeny, who is writing from a cubicle in Murmansk, doing his best to sow seeds of internal dissent in capitalist pig America, for the ultimate glory of watching Amerika devolve into a cesspool of ideological militia warfare. Or perhaps Yev is really Chaing Mai, typing now with a view of the Yangtze, doing her best to sow seeds of internal dissent in capitalist pig America, for the ultimate glory of watching Amerika devolve into a cesspool of ideological militia warfare, to China’s greater glory. I think "point of view" may have something to do with this but I really can't imagine how this point matters.

I personally think the memorial should be in the shape of a box cutter, to remind everyone who lives in the “first” world of how lowly a grade of weaponry was used to bring low the “mightiest nation”, to put its children into debt, and to subtract from its citizen’s carefully and courageously won freedoms at an utterly stupefying pace. In the absence of trust and friendship, such as Harriet evidences, there will be no end to such lowly weapons.

I have to enjoy the utter pompousness with which this Alec comports himself, in one breath insulting the posters here and then in the next breath condescendingly "complimenting" peoples' comments as if patting them on their little junior-high school heads, followed by a brisk handing out of assignments ("go compile a full list!") as though he imagines himself as the head of command of some conspiracy-busting team of super heros.

"... you've got to be curious what else he put in the memorial, don't you?"

No, I don't. No one is interested in your prentended mastery of hidden truths, except for other similarly-inclined (i.e., hidden-truths-obsessed, paranoid) folk, who fortunately comprise a only a small percencentage of humanity.

You aren't Dale Gribble (from "King of the Hill") in disguise by any chance, are you? Go back to hunting Bigfoot, and leave politics to grownups.

Shahnaz there has made the same point I had in mind while I was reading through the additional comments in this thread: If anything in modern religion is associated with the crescent, it's the BlessedVirginMary.

Of course, all crescents are implicit circles. Worshipping in circles is associated with paganism, not Islam. And, hey, trees! Bet he didn't think of that.

Islam doesn't have religious emblems. It is, as has been pointed out, an iconoclastic religion. The crescent moon, with or without star, goes way back in that part of the world.

Know where the crescent moon flag came from? It's the old flag of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul. Depending on who you believe, That City on the Bosphorus had either been using it since before Islam existed, or before Christianity existed. The Turks started using it after they took Constantinople. It's spread around to other places, but it's always been more of an Ottoman Turk thing than an Arab thing.

Note that: Ottoman thing, not so much an Arab thing, but in no case an Islamic thing. I hope I've got this right: in Islam, a symbol can't stand in for God, because God is God, whereas a symbol is just a symbol. What I know for sure is that many Muslims disapprove of the used of the crescent as even an implicit symbol for Islam. Calligraphic emblems are far more orthodox. (Now, if the memorial had been laid out in the shape of the name of Allah, I'd have thought Little Alec was on to something.)

Who else used the star-and-crescent emblem: King Richard I of England. I ran across this tidbit while I was factchecking myself:

"King Richard I of England adopted the star and crescent as a royal badge, from the [Byzantine] Emperor's standard of Governor Isaac Comnenus, after capturing Cyprus. Back in England, 'a crescent of gold on a shield of azure, with a blazing star of eight points, or rays of silver, between the horns', was granted to Portsmouth as the heraldic crest of the newly incorporated Royal borough. The English Admiralty took it as their emblem until the 16th century, when perhaps as a result of the fall of Constantinople, it was replaced by another emblem of Richard I, the Anchor of Hope. Rear-Admiral R.M. Blomfield writing in about 1900 pointed out in 'Origin and History of Admiralty Badges', that "Had the old badge been retained, the Admiralty and Ottoman flags would now be identical." The star and crescent is still on the arms of Portsmouth and between 1936 and 1939 appeared on the Blue Ensign of the Portsmouth Yacht Club."

Isn't that fun?

To summarize:

"crescent" does not equal "mosque""crescent" does not equal "Islamic""pointing eastward" does not equal "aligned toward Mecca"

If any of the corrected methods for more accurately identifying and bisecting the tips of the crescent show that the memorial is in fact pointing toward Istanbul, I'm willing to entertain the notion that what we have here is an actual Byzantine conspiracy; but that's as far as I'm willing to take it.

Actually, it still looks exactly as if you DID cherry-pick the crescent. You picked two terminus points--at the wall--that you thought best described a crescent, rather than the trees. Your choice seems arbitrary and speaks to me of a fundamental dishonesty.

Now, I don't claim to be able to survey the the site or its 'facing' accurately. In the main this is because I have far less faith in MS Paint as a plotting tool than you. I'd far rather find a land surveyor with finely calibrated instruments who knew what he was doing, though I suspect he might not choose the same arbitrary points on the plan as you. However, if you want more 'proof' you might wish to hire a reputable independent surveyor to do the job of measuring the facing of this crescent. I await the results with interest.

In the meantime I have noticed that your argument becomes progressively more tottery with every post. Though I admit you haven't yet actually stated the Wahhabi Saudis are behind the scheme to plant a mosque site at the monument, you have referred to them as sponsors of the majority of US mosques and I infer from your fulminating that they are the culprits behind this diabolic scheme you have uncovered.

If so, this would be strange. Islam is notoriously iconoclastic, while I have been told that Wahhabist/Salafists distain elaborate monuments on graves as well as supplications at graves. Given this information it would seem to be extremely out of character for devout Salafist Saudis to go along with such a scheme. Rather, the site as you imagine it would be regarded as an offense against God. Clearly these Muslims move in mysterious ways for them to profane their own deity like this.

Which leaves you having to prove that this site shares the characteristics of a mosque, in spite of the lack of a roof, divisions for men and women, facilities for ablutions, admonitions to enter unshod, inscriptions from the Qur'an, yadda yadda. If this is a mosque it will plainly be defiled, quite inadvertently, by non-believers on day one of the opening. I'd be surprised if devout Salafists, however fanatic at getting a foothold on sacred American turf, would leave themselves open to such insult and abuse.

In short, nothing makes sense about your claims. The motive for such a scheme, particularly by Salafists, is utterly absurd.

I may be a bear of very little brain, but even with my modest cognitive abilities I can reach the conclusion that you are what the majority of people on this website have said you are: a righteous clown, full of hate, making a complete tit of himself.

Which is no skin off my nose. Please keep it up. I need a good laugh. However, you may wish to consider the victims of your mean-spiritedness, the families. If you had any Christian decency or compassion you might consider apologizing to them for the unwanted and unnecessary stink you have created.

This flap is still going on? Christ. The claim that a semicircle of trees makes this an Islamic (and not just Islamic but ISLAMOFASCIST!) monument makes about as much sense as a Muslim Fundamentalist claiming that streets that cross at right angles are some sort of insidious Christian "Crusader" symbol.

There's only so much geometry out there. Sometimes an arc is just an arc.

I don't mind these folks having their paranoid fantasy world, but they really shouldn't keep trying to drag the rest of us into it.

Let me first disappoint you by saying that I largely agree with most of the other posts here. I don't think that the lack of posts supporting you points to a lack of intellectual curiosity or honesty on the part of the commenters here. Rather, it's indicative of how far out your beliefs are that no one here is supporting what you put forward.

If your theories were presented to me in my day job as a test engineer, I'd quickly dismiss them and view any additional effort spent on them as wastes of my time and my company's resources. As a Stanford engineering alum and acquaintance of a few former Stanford Review writers, however, I'll detail my objections.

Your argument seems to be of the form: 1) a set of facts about the memorial, and 2) consequences, both material and spiritual, based on those facts.

Let's take a look at the facts you present. You state that a crescent is an Islamic symbol, and, as such, its use is inappropriate in the memorial, except that the crescent, while associated with Islam in certain contexts, is not Islamic itself.

You state that the crescent is aligned to point to Mecca, except that 1) it doesn't:2 degrees over 5000+ miles results in quite a big error), 2) as Rob W pointed out, you had to game the data significantly to even come up with the 2 degree error, and 3) as Jennifer pointed out, any point on a sphere can be connected with any other point with an arc and there are an infinite number of arcs that be constructed to connect two points on a sphere.

You state that the crescent shape is a necessary component for it the trees to be interpreted as a mihrab, except it isn’t, and the trees are in the wrong orientation for a would-be-mihrab.

As easily as you found Islamic symbolism in the design, you gloss over the existence of crosses in the design. We wouldn’t be once again fitting data to match our ingoing assumptions, would we?

Allow me to geek out for a moment and reminisce to my high school debate days, wherein if you couldn’t lay out a statement of facts, you couldn’t propose a set of consequences. But, there’s been enough commentary in this thread to state that your concern that the memorial would be interpreted to be a mosque or other type of Muslim holy site is unfounded and that your thought that the families of the victims would be offended by the design is demonstratively false, given the families’ approval of the design and their request that the [approved] design not be demagogued for political points by the likes of you.

In summary, Mr Rawls, simply because you can construct an argument, does not mean that the argument is true or worth taking action over.

As PercyPrune and others have demonstrated, secretly making this memorial a mosque would be a grievous offense to Muslim religion practice. It therefore can't be an Islamic conspiracy.

Whose conspiracy can it be, then? I believe the leading candidates are:

1. Marian Catholics2. Conspirators from Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul3. The Portsmouth Football Club and/or its fans4. South Carolina5. Plantagenet legitimists6. persons nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire7. Tree-worshipping pagans8. Sinister forces at work in San Diego, Cordoba, and Perth

Some of these I can explain: Marian Catholics, because it's always a good time to do something in honor of the Blessed Virgin. Byzantines, because they have to maintain their reputation for arcane and convoluted conspiracies. South Carolina, because they're still ticked off about Gettysburg.

It comes as a breath of fresh air, these days, when the term "trolling" has been degraded to pre-teens posting ca-ca pee-pee jokes and endless Con/Lib name-calling battles on Yahoo, to see someone practising the ancient art in its classical form.

Bravo on a carefully-worked-out troll concept which has brought you a bumper crop of bites.

Remind me why you think Canada.com and the Christian Coalition are in the running?

In the meantime, here's the amended list:

01. Marian Catholics02. Conspirators from Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul03. The Portsmouth Football Club and/or its fans04. South Carolina05. Plantagenet legitimists06. persons nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire07. Tree-worshipping pagans08. Sinister forces at work in San Diego, Cordoba, and Perth 09. The United States Post Office10. My mother

QwertyBob: not to disagree with the overall thrust of yourargument, but there's one problem. While two points ona sphere -can- be connected with an infinite number ofarcs, what we're actually talking about is the shortest ofthese arcs. The arc you get if you stretch a string on acrossa globe; an arc with a center at the center of the earth.On the earth, these are called "great circles". When talkingabout "facing" something on the earth, it's generallymeant that something is pointing along a great arc fromthe source to the destination.

So that tiny bit of Alec's argument doesn't fall over quiteso easily (even though it does for lots of other reasons).

Interesting. Another thirty explanations about why you all are NOT going to investigate the facts, or care what they say.

To Brian CP. Thanks for the helpful suggestion that I do some study of mosque design myself. Obviously, I already have. That is why I suggested you do it, since you were expressing some interest in that direction. What you would find is very interesting.

Shanaz, if you really care about how Muslims are regarded in America, you ought to investigate what Murdoch is doing, because if if his design gets built, it is going to create a huge conflict between Muslims and the vast majority of American infidels.

It is amusing how many commentators think that the fact that Murdoch's giant crescent is oriented almost two degrees off Mecca makes the crescent innocuous. What will you think when you find out that the design also includes exact Mecca orientations, on exactly the same grand scale?

We could get there if you people were not just so incredibly lazy. No one on this site is willing to touch a fact with a ten foot pole. You keep surmising that, since I am the odd man out here, I must be the crazy one, even though every single one of you KNOWS, if you are honest with yourselves for a second, that 99% of Americans would think it is wildly inappropriate to have a giant Mecca oriented crescent as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial, a judgment that only one TBogger has acknowledged. You KNOW that you are the one's who are the ones taking the bizarre position, but you have this weird fantasy that if you are all nuts together, it is everyone else who is nuts.

There is such a thing as reality that serves as a basis for determining what is nuts and what is not. All I have seen so far here is excuses for not being interested in the facts.

If you need a MOTIVATION to look at the facts (you really shouldn't, it should just be what you do, as a rational human being), there is an obvious explanation for how there could come to be an Islamic-jihadist design for the Flight 93 memorial:

The Park Foundation hosted an OPEN COMPETITION in time of war. It fielded over one thousand entries. Of course we should expect that the Islamofascist enemy would enter this competition, and try to emplace a memorial to their heroes rather than ours. They also had a very powerful and beautiful structural theme to work with: the typical elements of mosque design, so it isn't too surpising that they could win. Murdoch's design is awesome. Not only is it the world's biggest mosque, but one of the most beautiful.

For anyone who thinks that a mosque requires a building, no so. The first mosque was the courtyard of Muhammad's house in Medina. Some of the largest capacity mosques in the world are just big open outdoor prayer-areas fronted by a qibla wall with a mihrab, giving the direction to Mecca.

Everyone here so far has started off with the presumtion that there is no way the design could actually be a memorial to the terrorists and looked for reasons not to investigate contrary evidence. For those who can't figure out how illogical that thought process is (all of you, I guess), how about realizing that your presumption is rediculous. There is EVERY reason to think the Islamofascists would have entered this competition. Why wouldn't they? So look at the evidence!

I looked at your so-called evidence and have rejected it for the reasons I have listed above. If there is anyone avoiding facts in this discussion, Alec, it is you.

At the end of the day I still have no idea why a cabal of iconoclastic Muslims would arrange the creation of a memorial that violates their religious precepts and which would be defiled by the infidel on the day of its opening.

I'm clearly not as smart as you so as to be able to understand the subtle intricacies of their devilish plot.

And maybe, just maybe, move on to something else: top secret Russian weather machines that control our skies; Area 51; re-growing your foreskin via attached weights, anything. And then just get back to us, okay?

wow. you totally comvinced me with that glass block thing. Accordingly the designer should just leave out the last Four civilians to have died, and thus leave the block count at 40, so as not to include blocks that are secretly for the terrorists! screw those last four people, they were probably at the back of the plane huffing glue and having anal sex anyway!

Yes, except that sometimes only Alec can see the horror of the memorial which we mindlessly admire. And then vice versa.

But at least we have a new reason for why it matters (is that reason #3 or #4, now? I've lost count): It will divide America! ("...it is going to create a huge conflict between Muslims and the vast majority of American infidels."

And Alec only cares about America! Even though it has twenty-watters in it. And people too lazy or unmotivated to find out the FACTS. He's that kind of noble, I guess.

Its nice to see that you took no pains to be accurate when coming up with your bisecting lines. To make the bottom terminus of the crescent you understandably chose the end of the actual red crescent but on the top it seems you chose to arbitrarily extend the crescent a short distance, where it turns brown in the picture. Yet on the bottom terminus there is also an extention which you did not include!

Yeah, but he's really got nothing else. And in his delusional state, the truth of it is obvious. All those people who are telling him that his ideas are worthless are just in league with the islamofascists, either as willing allies, or as ignorant dupes. He is the only one who can save us. If he were to seek therapy, his life would have little meaning.

Which, apparently, since he's the untalented son of an accomplished and genius academic, it's a problem that he's been struggling with all his life.

Alec, you keep saying no one has looked at "the facts," as if all 350 responses on this thread were "n00b! pwned!! LOL!!1! OH NOES!!1!"

In fact, many people with expertise in relevant fields have looked at "the facts," from the religious significance of the crescent for Muslims (nil) to your MSPaint pixel-counting/ cartographic skilz (sterling, which means you're one step away from transcribing alien messages via your molar fillings, since your elaborate calculations correspond to fuck-all in the real world). After examining your "facts," these posters documented their findings, which show that you're entirely and categorically wrong in every assertion it's possible to check.

Stop it, Alec. Just stop. You've been reduced to arguing that Murdoch, et al., are Islamofascist infiltrators. I hate to use clinical terminology, but you really are crazy as a shithouse rat. You need help.

WOW... That's all I can say to this thread. Alec's constant references calling for sane people to weigh in finally got to me so here I am.

Alec, thank you for giving me a clinical look inside the delusional mind of a paranoid obsessive/compulsive. It's been a truly dizzying experience. From a clinical standpoint you are truly an amazing subject and I thank you for that.

I hope you continue to work on this project with such zeal. I've decided to make you my end of term psych final project.

You do know that among players in the Society for Creative Anachronism, San Diego is known as the Barony of Califia, which is a part of the Kingdom of Caid and sends more than its fair share of fighters to Pennsic each year.

Pennsic is not terribly far from the site of the Flight 93 Memorial by Caidan standards, being close enough for practical purposes to the Pennsic war site. As you'll note, the heraldic device for the Kingdom of Caid has not one, but three silver crescents on it. The crescents show up in war banners and household devices for all manner of terroristic cell-structured insurgent groups who are in continual training evolution on a year-round basis. These enemies of the state are openly monarchist, and recognize no higher authority than God above their own self-selected royalty, certainly not any Constitutional republic. They amount to a violent fifth column in the United States, and the Kingdom of Caid, with their highly trained and brutally efficient Califian shock troops, pose a particular threat to the Kingdom of the East, centered in the New York City metropolitan area.

It's obvious, of course. The crescent isn't pointing toward Mecca. It's pointing the other direction, toward Berkeley— where the SCA was founded about thirty years ago. The crescent shape of the memorial is clearly a shrine to the fallen in the first Pennsic War, which was reputedly a dispute over which kingdom, the West or the East would be forced to annex the Midrealm, a wasteland that no one wanted.

Mr. Rawls, being an Easterner, certainly knows all this, and his clever misdirection here only serves to further obscure the true threat to American national security— the Barony of Califia. There you have it.

Mr. Rawls:You keep saying things like "We could get there if you people were not just so incredibly lazy. No one on this site is willing to touch a fact with a ten foot pole" and "look at the evidence". (3:06 pm)

You have delusional ideas of what constitutes "evidence".Counting pixels in MS Paint - of an artist's rendition - does not in fact constitute "evidence". Have you ever done any surveying? Get your ass over to Pennsylvania, hump in to the site lugging a theodolite, do some surveying, and then you might have some "evidence". Until then, what you are presenting are nothing more than armchair ravings.

Ok, you think that a crescent is an integral part of a mosque. You've been shown that it isn't. The shape on the ground is an arc segment, not a crescent. And it doesn't actually align on Mecca.

And you still think that YOU have a handle on the truth, and those who doubt you are being willfully stupid.

Sir, you have embarassed yourself in public. I can't suggest any way for you to climb down from here without losing more face, but your name has already become synonymous with "lunatic conspiracy theorist."

You know that funny outtake stuff they run after the credits to reward whoever's still watching? Here's a sampling from the comments to Alec's "Error Theory" (?!) post:

Okay...Im wavering back into the 'islamo-fascist conspiracy' column.The following things will convince me:

(I can't download the PDF for some reason, so bear with me)

1) One of the terrorists was an extremely large, thin man - symbolised by the large translucent marble 'plaque'. Perhaps this was the trained pilot, and his symbolic dimensions are enlarged to encompass the responsibility for the act. Although the thinness of the plaque may in fact be irrelevant.

2) The other three terrorists were by coincidence named '9', '11', and '2001'. Note that this coincidence may not be so amazing when you consider that they were hand-picked to perform their atrocity at a pre-determined date. Note also that their actual names may in some way be symbolised by these numbers, for example in the classical way in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number or some such thing.

As always, when analysing secret symbolism of this nature, one must know what to sieze upon as evidence, and what to discard that does not contribute to one's conspiratorial thesis. For this reason, we may need to ignore the dimensions and separateness of the 'plaque', and instead focus on its transparentness as evidence that it too (along with 9, 11 and 2001) represent the terrorists.# posted by col : 2:48 AM

Col: You have indeed hit on what is transparent. Inspired thoughts my friend.# posted by Alec Rawls : 3:28 AM

True, that there's only one shortest-distance arc linking two points on a sphere (except for the point directly opposite the first point, then there are an infinite number of shortest-distance arcs - what's a Muslim in the southeast Pacific to do!?). The issue that you and I apparently violently agree on is that that the great circle route between the site and Mecca doesn't bisect the arc of trees and that a great circle route starting from the origin of the arc won't hit Mecca. In my mind, with the two-degree offset already established (and, apparently, even that error is a result of dubious gaming), we don't have to discuss the shortest-route component of whatever arc Alec described.

Suppose you were a cryptoislamicofascist. Suppose thememorial was, in fact, a mosque. Does it not seem reasonablethat you, or someone from your cell, would be assigned tomarginalize all opposition to the memorial-qua-mosqueby portraying all such opposition as lunatic rantings?

Isn't that exactly what "Alec" is doing?

I'm calling bullshit on this whole charade tight now! "Alec"is an islamfascist! The memorial is a mosque! God save us.

Mr. Rawls has left rationality behind for a disturbing trip into the Twilight Zone. What I want to know is, how did the X files guys write a story where American forces crash a plane into the WTC six months before it happened but apparently nobody was watching the Lone Gunmen show at the White House? Or did they only tell Ted Olson, who needed to avoid a messy public divorce before finding a new hoochie mama? Go Alec, Go! LGF Commands you!

They also had a very powerful and beautiful structural theme to work with: the typical elements of mosque design, so it isn't too surpising that they could win. Murdoch's design is awesome. Not only is it the world's biggest mosque, but one of the most beautiful.

How many times does it have to be pointed out that the memorial does not incorporate "typical" mosque designs? It has also been pointed out numerous times that a mihrab has nothing to do with a crescent and if a crescent shape is used for a mihrab then it would be the closed part that points to the Mecca and not the open part. You ignore all these.

There is EVERY reason to think the Islamofascists would have entered this competition.Who exactly are these "islamofascists"? Is Murdoch one of them?

Why wouldn't they?Why would they? If you a terrorist trying to avoid getting caught, the publicity that comes with winning a design competition for a memorial would be the last thing you would want.

So look at the evidence!As for evidence, you have provided plenty of evidence that you are an escapee from a mental institution and you haven't taken your medicine for a while.

If the guy is totally correct and indeed a huge red crescent is aimed in homage to Mecca and Rupert is helping to bring it in and the Bush administration hasn't done anything to stop it,

well that means the Reich Wing War Machine is in cahoots with the Islamic Jihadist and this poor soul and all his following and ilk, from Rush on down to Blitzer, Santa's least loved reindeer, have been hoodwinked into playing into the hands of the terrible EBIL genius of a short fat one eyed man. For those not in the know the short fat one eyed man is the Muslim version of the antiChrist, or in that case the antiMuhamed.

pity the poor fool. If he's wrong he's just another loon. If he's right he and all his beliefs and heroes have been sold out. Poor dear.

A further thought for Mr. Rawls:There's an old barroom cliche, that when three people tell you you're drunk - no matter how euphoric you are feeling - perhaps you'd better lie down.

You are now in a situation where several hundred people - including, apparently, representatives from the NPS AND the survivors of the crash victims - have told you that your argument is somewhere ranging from 'unconvincing' all the way over to 'batshit crazy'.

Perhaps you should take a moment to re-evaluate your so-called 'evidence'. A course in Logic, or in Theory Design, or Surveying 101 may be in order as well.

In fact, many people with expertise in relevant fields have looked at "the facts"

To be fair to poor old Alec, I'm not sure how much 'expertise' has been exercised in this somewhat one-sided savaging. I'm not certain that any of us are particularly expert--I'm certainly not--though it's fairly clear to this Englishman that Alec also has bugger-all claim to expertise. His are Man-in-a-Pub assertions, based more on faith than fact, whose fundamental illogicalities reveal the wild-eyed mean spirit behind them. There's nothing to refute because he is a plainly bonkers yammerer who refuses to believe he is beat.

That said, you have to feel sorry for the lad. We're all too stupid to realize how brilliant he is. And he's right, we don't.

His one shot at being a big shot and we are peeing all over it. He could'a been a contender; he could'a been somebody. And here we are, giving him scant respect and slight regard, not treating him in the manner he feels he deserves. What does he get from us? A one way ticket to Palookaville.

However, my compassion and generosity toward him are somewhat crimped by the realization that he's been harrying and bugging the families of the Flight's victims with this unseemly, upsetting nonsense. He should apologize to them, but we know he won't.

Just one more step to take Rob. Defining the upper crescent tip as you did makes the crescent point CLOSER to Mecca.

Well, it looked like a pretty gross difference to me, so I doubt that. But then, nothing sensible can be determined from a pdf graphic, so no matter. Tell you what, why don't you get yourself out to the site with a theodolite and a compass, do the calculations properly and get back to us. I'm sure that'll help us take you much more seriously. And then you can explain how the architect, the prize committee and everyone else involved in approving the design were made part of this conspiracy.

Does Alec Rawls remind anyone else of Ignatius Reilly, of A Confederacy of Dunces?

Like Ignatius, Alec has a crazy-quilt approach to knowledge, combined with a pompous disregard for the opinions, feelings, and intellectual abilities of everyone else, which leads him to dig ever deeper into madness when the rest of us try to gently steer him back to reality.

That, or as a friend of mne said, he's just a character from Foucault's Pendulum. Either way, a sad, sad fate.

Tip to Alec: Thanks for engaging your critics; it's been fun. But based on your comments here, and your past writings on women and other topics, you have created a public record confirming your outright tap-dancing lunacy. Should you ever trouble the world again with your opinions, I trust someone will dig this up and send you packing right quick. (Well, I suppose Michelle Malkin may fall for your schtick again, but she's not 100% there either.)

2nd tip: I don't know how you relate to your father, but consider this: no one here would have given you the time of day if it weren't for curiousity at how badly wrong his son has gone. I'd wager that dynamic has played out more than once in your life. You aren't cut of for the same kind of work as him. Find a less intellectual career. Writing is not for you. People in this thread recommending psychiatric help aren't kidding you or poking fun. They're serious, and if you keep indulging this side of your personality, next time you'll be telling us about how the government broadcasts secret radio programs into your cranium.

If we didn't think you were unwell, we'd be giving you a lot more shit for upsetting the victims of this tragedy with your nonsense.

the most obvious flaw in your logic is that the memorial does not includes a cresent. A cresent is a moon shape, or a shape which tapers to a point at the ends, and widens in the middle. Like a croissant. Or the moon.

The partial outline of a circle that is included in the Flight 93 memorial is not a cresent, it is a thin line that does not widen in the middle, or taper at the ends.

"What if they build this memorial as is, and muslims come to pray for the victims of Flight 93?"

Bvac - but don't you see? You could never know - not FOR SURE - that the Moslems were REALLY praying for the victims! They could be praying for MORE atrocities, such is the byzantine inscrutable nature of PERSONAL PRAYER! WE WOULD NEVER KNOW!

Let me add my voice to the others here in saying that I did, in fact, review what you proposed. As a matter of fact, I addressed it largely point by point.

You state at 3:06 PM: "...wildly inappropriate to have a giant Mecca oriented crescent as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial..." A classic argument technique, Alec, asuming your suppositions as truths. I'd argue that the arc is neither Mecca-oriented nor is it a crescent. Others have, too. Similarly, several other of your arguments are provable false -- posters here have argued your understanding of Islam, architecture, and geometry.

But the point at which you really lose me is where you argue that Murdoch, a man with a reputation that preceded him, is, in fact, a cryptoIslamofascist just waiting (apparently for his entire life) to place an improperly designed super secret mosque in a memorial in which the mosque will be instantly desecrated the moment the memorial is opened.

No, it's not enough for you to suggest that Murdoch has accidently appropriated Islamic symbolism in an offensive way (again, assuming that an arc is a crescent, a crescent is an Islamic symbol, and that Khartoum is Mecca). Instead, you posit that when given the chance to submit a design, an Islamofascist (natch, one with no previous Islamofascist leanings) would submit one that's incompetently executed and sacreligious. And why would the Islamofascists do something like that? Because they're just that crafty!

The bottom line, Alec, is that you are a very, very poor researcher. As I alluded to in my first comment, the fact that your arguments are easily and quickly rebutted reflects more on your arguments than the intellectual curiosity of the commenters.

You know, I kind of hope that Rawls is a 'troll' having a laugh at our expense, instead of a Man lost out in left field.

At first, I was amused by his 'claims,' and the Responses.

Then, I realized that he was claiming (with his charges), that the Architect of the Memorial had deliberately constructed "the worlds largest mosque" as a "memorial to terrorists." Apparently, as part of some islamofascist conspiracy that entered an open competition.

So, I asked myself Who is this guy that he's accusing, and how does' he feel about all this?

Here's the answer I got, with a little help from Google:

Here is his Bio, from the USC faculty website. Yes, he teaches architecture there:

"Paul Murdoch, AIA

EducationB.S. Arch., University of VirginiaM. Arch., University of California, Los Angeles

Paul founded his own firm, Paul Murdoch Architects, in 1991 after ten years of professional design, management and production experience in all phases of urban design, architecture and interiors. He spent seven years working with AIA Gold Medalist Arthur Erickson, one year with AIA Gold Medalist Charles Moore, and one year with AIA Firm of the Year, Geddes Brecher Qualls & Cunningham. Paul's projects include the Donald Bruce Kaufman Brentwood Branch Library, the Marion and Robert S. Wilson Medical Student Center at UCLA, the winning design for the Beverly Hills Civic Center, the Civic Center and Pershing Square Metro Rail Stations, and the "Watercourt" at California Plaza. He has designed buildings for General Motors, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UCLA and homes in Palo Alto, Newport Beach, Los Angeles, Colorado, and Montana.

Paul has received five grants and fellowships from, among others, the American Institute of Architects and UCLA. He is a member of the Eco Cities Council Administrative Committee, the Westside Urban FORUM, and the City of Los Angeles Environment Affairs Department's Design Group. Each of these groups addresses Los Angeles' development and planning needs. Paul has been a member of the AIA since 1987 and is a registered architect in California and Arizona."

Hardly the resume of a man wanting to build a "terrorist memorial" is it? Or, do you think that his Library, Student Medical Center, and the Beverly Hills Civic Center also have secret "islamofascist" symbolism?

If that were not enough, he has heard of this 'controversy,' and this is his response, from www.phillyblurb.com:

"The architect of the memorial to a plane downed in western Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, said Wednesday he would work to satisfy critics who complained that it honors terrorists with its crescent-shaped design.

Designer Paul Murdoch said he is "somewhat optimistic" that the spirit of the design could be maintained.

"It's a disappointment there is a misinterpretation and a simplistic distortion of this, but if that is a public concern, then that is something we will look to resolve in a way that keeps the essential qualities," Murdoch, 48, of Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview...

.."We called it a 'crescent' because it was a curving land form. We called it 'Crescent of Embrace' because of the symbolic gesturing of embracing this place," Murdoch said. "There's no desire to make this a divisive memorial."

It's sad that a respected L.A. architect is being accused of being a collaborator with terrorists, just cuz he added a crescent into a very poignant memorial design.

It's very sad that this accomplished man and his lovely design is being sniped at by a delusional son of another accomplished man -- but I guess that might be one of the undelying points of Alec's delusions. If he can "take down" Paul Murdoch, he can "take down" the status of his father.

It's very sad that the delusion is being supported by other unhinged wingnuts who have made a memorial designed to be a comfort to the survivors of the people killed on Flight 93 into a political football.

As fun as this thread has been, we can only hope Alec gets the psychiatric help he so obviously needs. As do the other wingnuts who support him.

As for us, I say we support Murdoch and the families who approved the design. I'll see if I can rustle up some email addresses so we don't clog phone lines.

Time to start fighting back against this insanity which has engulfed our precious country.

"Of course we should expect that the Islamofascist enemy would enter this competition"

Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan....

AHMED: Hey, Boss, look what I see in the New York Times! They're requesting proposals for a memorial to the victims of Flight '93.

OSAMA: Gimme that! (Grabs newspaper) It says here that the Park Foundation is hosting OPEN COMPETITION!! Those foolish Americans! In a time of war!! I see our opening here to wreak terror on the Great Satan!!!! Ahmed, quickly, tell me about your cousin Ali, the landscape architect at Cornell. Could he possibly brainwash one of his American classmates to enter a design that would be (sound efffect --- TA DAH!) The WORLD'S BIGGEST MOSQUE?????????????

What are you worried about, Alec? Helloooo? The Rapture is imminent, right? Kick back with some Left Behind books, fortify your compound, home school the kids, and get those canned goods and firearms stockpiled.

Alec, what I still don't get is: What is your main beef: (a) That the arc (I guess we really can't call it a crescent, because it isn't) points to Mecca so that the memorial is functionally a mosque, because the function of one element of a mosque (the mirhab) is to point worshippers towards Mecca; or (b)That viewed from the air, the shape of the trees and the copse of trees resemble the Ottoman symbol of crescent/stars.

Because those two things seem independent of each other. That is, the Ottoman symbol has nothing to do with a mirhab, and vice versa. As earlier posters have commented, (1) the crescent/star symbol does not POINT to anything, and (2) a mirhab has no particular shape, but rather a function (as a finger pointing at the moon). Can you explain how these two elements are related in your mind? Is the conspiracy that there is to be a giant open air mosque in an inappropriate place, or that people in helicopters and hot-air balloons will inadvertently be saluting the flag of Turkey?

I have learned a lot in this discussion, so thank you, Alec. About mosque design, the history of the crescent symbol, mental illness. And that postage went up this weekend.

Its been very interesting to read this thread. Mr. Rawls, I will give you credit for one thing... you've been pretty cool headed in the face of tons of insulting comments about your mental health. But you are also awfully rigid in your belief that this symbolism is a message only you (and the enlightened) can see. Did you see "A Beautiful Mind" by the way? Anyway since there is no derogatory ground left untrodden regarding your, lets just say "enthusiasm", for this theory of yours. So if we just assume for a minute that what you say IS in fact true, could you please explain the motive of the architect in DOING this? Did the memorial committee accidentally hire Osama-bin-Murdoch and not realize he would secretly embed all this Islamic symbolism into the design? Someone would have to care passionatly about this subject to view it as important to put this secret symbolism into the memorial...WHY would he do it? Is there anything in this mans background, history or other work to remotely suggest that he would try to put this symbolism into his work? Looking at his website it looks like all his other projects are boring shit like town halls, library additions and college buildings - no minarets or crescents or religious structures of any kind on them. And besides, wasn't this an open, juried CONTEST? Didn't they select his "crescent" design from a bunch of other possibilities? Was he just so lucky that they picked the one and only islamic-themed entry in the contest? Can you give me anything remotely as well investigated as your treatise on the symbolism which might suggest that there is shred of motive to make the thinking person believe that there is any possible reason to believe your theory of islamic symbolism? You keep answering everyone by restating that they must see and accept the symbols you see. Ok, it IS a semicircle oriented toward Mecca if you look at it your way... you happy? Now PULEASE explain why it matters and why you think these architects would BOTHER to do this?

As a lover of irony, this all looks increasingly to me like one elaborately or accidentally constructed piece of satire.

Here we are, lobbing lengthy arguments at a man we claim is wasting his time and energy on theories that, if true, would still be of no consequence. Alec feeds us his glimpses of logic while expressing exasperation at our failures to hear the clarion call of reason, and we take the bait. We bite back with reasoned argument, pages after pages of rebuttals -- some even investigating the nonsense! -- in order to disprove a theory that we knew was a product of that mode of reasoning called schizophrenia.

Alec Rawls is the perfect caricature of a reasonable thinker. And by attempting to demonstrate the wrongness of his thinking, we only dimly approximate that perfection.

stjoe - it would be a great hoax if rawls was just a clever intellectual enjoying the fun of playing devils advocate (or I guess maybe infidel's advocate) and enjoying a laugh at his detractor's expense. But if you read his archives of wignuttia blogging he's been out there for years. I think he's a genuine nutcase, not an imposter if that's what you meant. But his flight 93 stuff is uniquely kooky compared to all his other run of the mill rightwing commentary.

Yeah, StJoe, if Rawls weren't hurting the Flight 93 families with his misguided paranoid theories, it might be just an amusing game. I might even feel a little guilty for taunting someone so obviously mentally impaired and misguided. But since he's actually hurting fine and innocent people, both the families and the fine artists who came up with this beautiful memorial, he deserves all of the calumny that's been heaped upon him. It would have been harsher, but most people realize that Rawls more deserves our pity than our anger.

"I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. "Stop!" I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. "This is madness." But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy. There on the worn stones of the Quarter, I enlisted the aid of this wilted flower of a human in gathering his associates in foppery together behind a banner of brotherhood.

Our first step will be to elect one of their number to some very high office - the presidency, if Fortuna spins us kindly. Then they will infiltrate the military. As soldiers, they will all be so continually busy in fraternizing with one antoehr, tailoring their uniforma to fit like sausage skins, inventing new and varied battle dress, giving cocktail parties, etc., that they will never have time for battle. The one whom we finally make Chief of Staff will want only to attend to his fashionable wardrobe which, alternately, will permit him to be either Chief of Staff or debutante, as the desire strikes him."

-- John Kennedy Toole, Confederacy of Dunces, page 280.

Wait a minute. Why am I suddenly thinking of George W. Bush and his collection of monogrammed jackets?

You know, at first, like a lot of you, I figured that Alec was just some paranoid whack-job.

But then, I started to do the math. I guess it was when I discovered that Global TV in Canada actually uses a red crescent as their logo that I first started to think that he might not be so crazy after all.

Then I took a look, not at the overhead plans (which Alec has kindly posted on his website), but at 3D architectural projections of what the site will actually look like when the construction is over, the trees have matured, and the memorial is filled with visitors.

Oh my, God! I'm not kidding. Something is seriously going on with this whole project. It's totally clear. I mean, just take a look at how the memorial is going to look based on this rendering of the site.

It really is fun to watch you people come up with one idiotic excuse not to look at the evidence after another. Like the meme about the crescent not being a crescent. I guess none of you has investigated far enough to learn that the name of Murdoch's design is "Crescent of Embrace." So no, little miss Percyprune (a better name than Mister Fister I guess), it was not horribly dishonest of me to base my analysis on the geometry of a crescent.

RobW actually looked at the Mecca orientation of the crescent but refuses to believe his lying eyes. QwertyBob continues to wield RobW's charge that I "gamed" the orientation of the crescent by cherry-picking the upper crescent tip, even after I explained how the alternative crescent tip that RobW prefers yields an orientation CLOSER to Mecca.

Numerous commentators have picked up on the theme that the crescent is not an Islamic symbol. Why does it have to be ME who corrects that? Your criticisms are one absurdity after another, and none of you care. Any random idiocy is good enough for you. It's all the excuse you need to squeeze your eyes tight shut.

It was inspiring to see Mister Fister actually correct the peculiar idea that there is no such thing as an orientation between two points on a globe. Yay, the baby managed to lift its head for a second! But that was apparently all he had.

The funniest meme is the one about your mindless criticisms being the test for what real people will think.

Still, all the comedy aside, I do wish I could get you people to comprehend that this incapacity you have to correct yourselves (after a whole day still repeating idiocies like "it's not a crescent, it doesn't point to Mecca") is a serious mental and moral problem. In effect what you are saying is "You can't MAKE me think straight. Nyah nyah. I win!"

Well, maybe I'll try again sometime. I don't like to easily give up on people. I'll just repeat what I said earlier, for any who realize that there might possibly be something wrong with this sub-culture of lame excuses to avoid reason and evidence: getting out of the bubble is as easy as can be.

Just think frontwards instead of backwards. Just follow reason and evidence, instead of starting with preferred conclusions and looking for excuses to avoid contrary reason and evidence. Nobody needs to be stuck in this hellhole of brain-dead stupidity. Just. Get. Out.

Threadkiller said... this Alec Rawls reminds me of Steven Lightfoot, who has devoted his life to showing how John Lennon was actually murdered by Stephen King.

http://www.lennonmurdertruth.com/

3:50 PM

Mark B. from Austin TX said... It's a pretty apt comparison, Threadkiller. Lightfoot shows a picture of Chapman with Lennon* and says that the guy in the photo identified as Chapman is actually Stephen King. But when you look at the photos that Lightfoot offers as 'proof', you see that the only thing that Chapman and King have in common is that they're both stocky white guys with bad haircuts. Their faces are not even similar. Geez, King was goofy looking back in the 70s. But to Lightfoot, the photos prove that the guy who shot Lennon was actually the novelist Stephen King. In order to even start to believe this, you have to somehow see things the way he does.

Likewise, Rawls shows us an architectural diagram of a memorial that contains a vague semicircle, and asks us to believe that it is an iconic bit of Muslim architectural design.

I've seen this sort of thing work for Creationists. I attended one revival type meeting where the so-called scientist showed pictures of random rock formations from aerial photographs of Mt. Ararat. There was nothing remarkable about the rock formations, but there was a lot of rubble visible. He told the audience that he could see the remnants of Noah's ark in the photos, and within a few minutes, a lot of people there could see it too. He convinced the flock to give him donations to continue his research (ostensibly for an expedition to explore the area on foot). It may be that Rawls is running a similar kind of game. Or he may just be mentally ill. I'm leaning towards option 2, since I think there are very few people stupid enough to support this kind of enterprise financially, but I may be wrong.

*Tragically, Lennon signed something for Chapman some time before he was shot, and the moment was photographed.

"Numerous commentators have picked up on the theme that the crescent is not an Islamic symbol. Why does it have to be ME who corrects that?"

Uh, because you're the one making the initial argument? When you make a claim, and someone makes a counter-claim, you are responsible for defending your initial claim. Not some magical super-hero lurker on this blog who will swing in on a web shot from his wrists and defend you against the evil lobotomized islamofascistapologistterroristlovingliberals who so obviously populate this thread. It's your responsiblity, because it's your head that's full of crazles and making these lunatic claims.

Here's an example of the way in which you, and only you, are responsible to defend any argumentative claims you make regarding your "research".

Imagine I attend an academic conference, wherein I present a paper in which I argue that Kenneth Burke's thought was more than a fad, and is in fact vastly important to the field of Communication today and is to be ignored at the peril of the modern COMM researcher. In the Q&A period, a colleague stands up and takes issue with my argument, for one of hundreds of reasons I could imagine (Burke was a little crazles himself, his "grand theory of Communication" doesn't cover many basic and specialized cases, etc.). In that moment, I am responsible to defend my work. If I cannot, well, that's the end of that story. I don't disappear in a puff of smoke or anything, but still, I was unable to defend my work. I don't cry to the heavens (or the ceiling of the conference room), "Why does it have to be ME who corrects that"? If I did so, the attendees at my talk would look at me strangely and say, "because it's your talk." Then they would stand up, eat a scone or a croissant, put down their paper coffee cups, and mill about and buzz amongst themselves about what an arrogant asshole I was, then forget about me completely at the next talk they attended, in which they heard Walt Fisher's latest extensions to his Narrative Paradigm. By giving up your right and responsibility to defend your own work, you essentially admit that you are unable to do so. And it makes you look like you haven't done your homework, haven't accounted for all contingencies, and (frankly) HAVE A HEAD CHOCK FULL OF CRAZLES.

Just think frontwards instead of backwards. Just follow reason and evidence, instead of starting with preferred conclusions and looking for excuses to avoid contrary reason and evidence. Nobody needs to be stuck in this hellhole of brain-dead stupidity. Just. Get. Out.

Don't mind me, I needed to post that once more to recalibrate the OSX.wtf.irony settings on my laptop and now I'm done so please, continue your conversation.

Thank you for your comment about my Post. I agree, that it would be a good idea to support Murdoch and the Flight 93 Families from these delusionary accusations. I'll look for any ideas that you have.

Because, I no longer feel that Rawls is funny, or able to listen to reason.

I decided to look more in depth at Rawls claims on his website. Besides seeing Crescents, and other islamic referances everywhere.. he is thoroughly convinced that the Memorial is designed to glorify the Terrorists who hijacked Flight 93.

Leading him to this conclusion,

"He (Paul Murdoch) might have gotten away with it. But we cannot let him get away with it now. Paul Murdoch's Flight 93 memorial, both originally and in its barely modified incarnation, is not just a bit of P.C. openness to Islamic symbolism. It is an explicit and thorough-going shrine to the terrorists. Murdoch is an Islamo-fascist. He is one of the enemy, trying to plant an Islamo-fascist memorial on the graves of our murdered heroes. No other explanation is possible. Please help stop this evil."

If I were Mr. Murdoch, I would be seriously considering a libel/defamation of character suit against this guy, and possibly a restraining order.

I'll join you, in saying to Mr. Rawls:

If you really believe that the Flight 93 Memorial, is a Islamofascist Plot by a L.A. Architect, I strongly suggest you seek Psychiatric Help.

I followed a link from C&L to this discussion; I can't believe I've kept coming back to this post all day.

It's like a car crash. I have to look.

It is a human failing to not give up on those who are clearly no longer with us. We try to explain to the paranoid schizophrenic that no, there are no microphones hidden in the walls. We use logic, reason, fact.

And it never works. But still, we try. I guess we are better for our attempts, but still...

I hope I have the strength tomorrow not to come back and look at this mess again.

I'm surprised that nobody has noticed that the memorial looks quite a bit like the Japanese flag.

That should not be a surprise, given that it was designed by an architect, and architects are known for admiring Japanese design and culture, especially those commies at UCLA. Have we already forgotten Pearl Harbor?

The Donald Bruce Kaufman Library in Brentwood, Los Angeles CA was designed by an Islamofascist?????

Oh my god!!!!! Here's a bio of Mr. Kaufman's widow, who worked with Murdoch to creat the Library:

http://www.wac.ucla.edu/kaufman.php

"Twice Brentwood Citizen of the Year, she has been honored by the Rotary Club, recognized for philanthropy by the ARCO Foundation, and serves on the board of Stop Cancer, a national research fund begun by the late Armand Hammer, former chairman of Occidental Petroleum Company. She is a major contributor to Israel Tennis Centers, which offer children throughout Israel an opportunity to learn tennis, develop sportsmanship and to study. She also provides scholarships for single mothers at the University of Judaism."

You know, an old saying that I've found to be true in my years working in industry is: never ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to incompetence. So, I withdraw my claim that Alec intentionally gamed his geometry and instead state that Alec incompetently and inadvertently screwed up the relatively simple geometry of the memorial site. Accepting Alec's new work on faith, we still have a arc which doesn't actually face Mecca.

Interesting factoid: The House of Saud paid American defence contractors hundreds of thousands of dollars in the late 70's/early 80's to install chairs in the royal family's aircraft which would continuously face Mecca. What was an extensive controls problem 25 years ago (and one which the Saudis didn't want the rest of the world to know that they had hired infidels to solve) could now probably be addressed with about $1K worth of parts (GPS receiver and antenna and a few servo motors) and very slight integration work.

Alec, Alec, please. Stop arguing with the people who don't accept your interpretation of the facts and give the rest of us SOMETHING to go on in the are of WHY, like WHY if what you say IS TRUE would this architect have done it? Wouldn't someone have to have some sort of motive to do this on purpose? Its the biggest obstacle in my mind to considering the rest of the points you make about the design. If there is no possible reason offered that these actions took place its hard to accept that they are intentional, isn't it? Have you thought about the rest of this? Can you fill us in?

I just have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Rawls wants to just get his site counter up to some predetermined number so he can manipulate that into "see, all of these people agree with me."

I went once to his site and realized that with a little bit of Photoshop and a lot of time on one's hands, one could make "facts" that support their argument. I believe that I could make the fictional Willy Wonka single handedly the cause of obesity in Zimbabwe. Of course, I have bills to pay, a job, and a social life, so I will not be getting into the truth of that evil Wonka bastard. (*Please note sarcasm here*)

Mr. Rawls wanted people that are obviously visiting but not commenting (as he is all about site counters.... hmmm) because he believes those others must agree with him. Let me make this official - I do not agree with Mr. Rawls and his hyped up "facts." I also think it is ingenuous for someone to complain about groupthink when his obvious goal is to have groupthink on his own assertions. That boys and girls is called hypocrisy and I have had enough of Mr. Rawls because of it.

shouldn't someone let the designer of the site know about this nut job so he can take this and get a restraining order? This cat is clearly delusional, and OCD. These types of people often take their delusions to the killing stage.

I only got to read about a tenth of the comments here, and it's too late in the evening for me to continue, so I’m just going to say this, and then shut up.

I’m going to have to tear my shed down.

It kinda-sorta faces EAST, which means it kinda-sorta faces MECCA, which kinda-sorta means that it going to be a MOSQUE, whether I want it to or not, and or course there’s no room in there for a prayer-rug since I’ve just bought a snow-blower, and it’s taking up too much room anyway.

It gets worse.

Since it’s going to be a mosque, and since once it’s considered to be a memorial for terrorists, it can’t be undone by turning to face, oh GRACELAND or something, I’ve got no choice other than to burn it flat, salt the ground, call a priest, and hope for the best.

Okay, okay, I'll bite - if only to be certain I'm not counted as one of the hits that agrees with Alec Rawls. It's clear to me the man has never been in a mosque and doesn't really understand what a mahrib is.

But, if we want to be all conspiracy crazy lets take a look at this excerpt from Wikipedia definition of mihrab - The mihrab is considered by both Muslim and Western scholars as an element taken from churches, an element added to the mosque of architectural reasons. SO - maybe the rightwing nutty Chirstians are the ones behind the big bad scary mahrib in the memorial after all. Hmmm...

Alec, I have just discovered a fact that I know you will find irresistible, and that you will have to admit is equally as rigorous as your theory about the Flight 93 Memorial:

If you assign a numerical value to each letter of your name, where "A" is 1 and so on, "Alec Rawls" adds up to 94, only one higher than the flight number.

But, here's the important part: If you also add up the letters in the phrase wacko freak, it also adds up to 94! So, Mr. Rawls, by using logic at the same level as your theory, you are clearly a wacko freak, and you should therefore doubt your own theory, being the product of a wacko freak.

HAHAHA! It is so good to see the right-wing back on track! It's cracked me up how, during this administration, "conspiracies" were supposedly the standard story of the left. Thank you, Mr. Rawls, for picking up the ball and running with it. I'm just surprised that you didn't try and prove that the crescent was pointing towards Clinton's office in Harlem.

The updated list of conspirators who are far more likely to be responsible for this scheme:

01. The Kingdom of Caid02. The Portsmouth Football Club and/or its fans03. Sinister forces at work in San Diego, Cordoba, and Perth04. Marian Catholics05. Conspirators from Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul06. Canada.com (because Doodle Bean insists)07. The Christian Coalition (ditto)08. South Carolina09. The cryptoislamofascist cell to which Alec Rawls belongs10. Plantagenet legitimists11. persons nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire12. Tree-worshipping pagans13. The United States Post Office14. My mother15. The Japanese

I believe Little Alec is responding to me when he says:

"Numerous commentators have picked up on the theme that the crescent is not an Islamic symbol. Why does it have to be ME who corrects that?"

Because, tweedlebrain, you're the one trying to argue that it is, and you're wrong.

You know the bit about how extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof? Well, claims contrary to known fact require something really remarkable in the way of proof. It's your responsibility to come up with it. So far, you haven't come anywhere near doing that.

You lose! Neener-neener!

"Your criticisms are one absurdity after another, and none of you care. Any random idiocy is good enough for you. It's all the excuse you need to squeeze your eyes tight shut."

Yeah'uh-huh. Completely at a loss for anything to say in reply, right?

Why Alec Rawls will never abandon this argument:

1. People are paying attention to him.

2. If he's right about this codswallop, then he's smart, and he's On To Something, and he knows more than just about anybody what's going on there. I expect this is a rare and cherished experience in his life, even though he's dead wrong and making a spectacle of himself in public.

I feel a little bit sorry for Alec, in an icky kind of way. I reserve my real contempt for people like the squamous and rugose Michelle Malkin, who can't possibly believe this story is true, but who nevertheless ran with it back in September in order to feed the online thugs their regular dose of manufactured outrage.

A couple of thoughts.First, Paul Deignan does not have to worry about being the nuttiest,most obsessive wingnut anymore (Hi Paul---I know you're going to read this, because you look for your name on the internets. How's the lawsuit going? )Second, Alec, obviously you are suffering from a huge inferiority complex because your father was someone big and famous. Let me help you out---he was overrated. He's no big deal. Apply yourself, and you can outdo him! Go for it, man!

Crescents and Stars? C'mon now, Alec, help me out here. They're just a bunch of Satan worshippers huh?

That's the key, all, those nasty islamofascists are just running cover for Satan, and the rapture will soon follow if only we have the war between the gods but then Alec shouldn't be trying to stop the crescent roll memormorial, OMG, Crescent Rolls, "Let's Roll" don't you see it all, people?

ATT and Sprint and MCI are all recombining into Ma Bell and soon we'll have those crescent shaped phone dials and then the world will end!!!

If I claim the above, and there is no dissent from the opposing point of view, despite my best arguments, a claim that group-think and laziness is the only possible reason for opposition to my theory might be a bit premature.

Capitalizing evidence does not make it incontrovertible. Denouncing opposition as morons doesn't give your case merit (except on LGF).

If attempting to use MATH and SCIENCE to prove your point, it helps to use STATISTICS to approximate the ACTUAL LIKELIHOOD that something RANDOM has OCCURRED. I've put the important bits in all caps, for the benefit of those requiring an executive summary.

Statistics Hint: Taking one measurement to create a line segment using tools that are generally not used in the trades of architecture/surveying, and then extrapolating halfway around the globe using another tool of uncertain precision to calculate great circle routes (is this in fact precise enough to be in general use by navigators?) might perhaps introduce uncertainty into your calculations. What is the range of this uncertainty? What percentage of the world population lives within the error bar of your Great Circle Route? Can all other destinations along the route be ruled out as reasons for this axis/focus for design of the monument? Are there perhaps other features closer to the monument site that have a more powerful impetus on the design of the monument?

On another front, when telling the world about the most important duty of followers of Islam, talking to an aforementioned follower might educate you to the fact that there are quite a few duties that rank quite a bit higher than "cede no territory to the infidel." Google: "five pillars of Islam," and let me know how many of the ~614,000 hits list your primary duty in the top five. Google: "Primary duty Islam" (1.46 million hits) and tell me how many of those hits refer to maintenance of territorial boundaries against the incursion of secular invaders. Is it fair of me to accuse you of laziness, idiocy or insanity if you do not choose to undertake arbitrary tasks that I decide are the only acceptable means to prove or disprove my premise?

I would propose that some of the values of 2 that you are using are rather large.

It's coming for us! Since you aren't as disturbed as I am, you and everyone else are lazy, blind surrender monkeys. SWEET JESUS, my leg is being chewed on by a devil spawned by a winning Islamofascist design team, while I'm surrounded by LOBOTOMIZED ZOMBIES!!!!! It sucks to be me, except this is sort of exciting.

You know, when Rawlsy said he'd chosen the end of the wall to measure from rather than the trees even though using the trees produced a better result, I did think, "Well, OK, maybe it does sorta point at Mecca then. Of course, I'm gonna have to take his word for that, as you couldn't possibly measure it properly with this data, but just because the guy's crazy doesn't necessarily make him a liar, so maybe using the trees for the baseline does leave the bisector only 150 miles off course rather than 250." Did I then think that maybe the architect really designed it that way on purpose, or that he really was intentionally using "Islamic" symbolism, or indeed that he was part of an "Islamofascist" conspiracy to appropriate the site as a memorial to the hijackers? Nah, I thought - "Bugger me, what a freakin' weird coincidence!" And that, Rawlsy, is how I know I'm sane.

I've taken a great deal of enjoyment from Alec's efforts feeding his new-found candidacy for Troll of the Year. He's become the proverbial lead-pipe cinch, and it's only the second week of the new year!

I am an architect and more than Alec's analysis of the memorial design elements, which he subjectively derived and justified, I find all of Alec's assertions and suppositions about Paul Murdock's intentions as a designer and motivations as a religious antagonist most remarkable. Because without Murdock's insurrectionist intent, Alec will have to face his own insignificance as a thinker -- particularly painful for him, no doubt, considering his progenitor. He's put himself into a no-win situation and he doesn't know it yet.

Alec has built a remarkable house of conceptual cards, constructed and rationalized in his own mind and fed by some superficial geometrical analysis (the whole Truth of the World can be found in Math spider's web). And it's equally remarkable that he's exposing it so eloquently and PUBLICLY for consideration, analysis, and criticism. Good for you, son! Most people squander their 15 minutes, but you've decided to use yours immolating yourself with high-octane petrol!

Finally, this is such a remarkable thread that I had to add my own graffiti to the TBOGGian tapestry.

You know, this whole thing reminds me of when Ashcroft covered up a statues tits with blue drapes because they made him uncomfortable. Until he mentioned it, I didn't even notice. When he made a big deal about it, I was like "....huuuuh?". And I bet if he didn't make a big deal about it, the world would still be turning today.

I was going to post about Mr Rawls seeming like a character out of Foucault's Pendulum, but I was beaten to it. Reading this thread made me realize one thing, whatever else Rawls is, he really is a malignant character and it's a shame there is no such thing as forced commitment to mental facilities anymore. This really isn't funny at all, and it's obvious that Rawls has no compassion for those who have gone through so much already, only to have to deal with someone who couldn't care less what they want as long as he is seen as some sort of "crusader" winning a battle against Islam. He even cannot defend his reasoning in any adequate fashion, not even his ridiculous view of the crescent, of which I find this definition: The figure of the moon as it appears in its first or last quarter, with concave and convex edges terminating in points . I looked and looked at the artist's rendition and I see a broken circle. I was all set to believe him to be a deluded chucklehead being used by some rather nasty political freaks in a ginned-up sideshow, but the farther this goes, the worse he looks to me - I see some real malignancy of thought here.

It was called a crescent by the architect, but it isn't one.The star-like object is not exactly where a star should be.The line that bisects the curve (whose endpoints are ambiguous, making the bisection ambiguous) is about 2 degrees off. Chance of that happening at random: 4 in 360, or 1 in 90. If this were post-hypothesis sample, that would be minutely suggestive, but given the selection effect, a >1% likelihood is meaningless.

Plus, no account of why it would have been intended that way, why the errors are so large, how the emboldened islamofascists were supposed to figure it all out, and why we should hate an islamic symbol (were it one) when most muslims are not remotely sympathetic to islamofascists.

The comments above on 'feeding the troll' are apt. We are giving young Alec what he most craves: attention and validation. Of course, we are not validating his theory, rather his conspiracy by the mere fact of disagreeing with him.

The real tragedy in all this would be if Murdoch or the memorialists caved in to Alec's political correctness and made a concession, no matter how small. Then in Alec's view everything, all the hurt and humiliation, would be justified. And he'd have been proven right in his own mind.

The very worse thing you can do to a crazy like Alec is indulge him, to allow his little wedge issue to gain purchase. It would legitimize him and make him stronger. The proper response is to rebut them and prevent them getting their way, to stall them dead, to rob them of any legitimacy. This takes a grass-roots effort. It takes a combined effort of will to stand up and be counted against these clowns who would wish their crazy agenda pushed into the mainstream. I'd go along with those who recommend writing to the architects or the park service to suggest that they do not give in to people who slander the architect and espouse grand conspiracies.

I'd suggest trying to make your letters as religiously neutral and non-partisan as possible. The issue here is NOT that Alec is a bigot (he is). It's NOT that he is a rightist wingnut who gives Christianity a bad name (he is). It's that he's a nutter, plain and simple.

He's a fabulist of conspiracies, a fool who sees a mosque where the rest of us see a park, uses unsound methods as 'proof' of his crackpot theories and slanders the architect. We have his own words published here to quote and use against him.

You should argue purely on the basis that he's a wild-eyed crazy who has had far more than his alloted 15 minutes of fame and should be indulged no further. A line should be drawn in the sand. People should not give in to crazies.

Of course, by doing something active people briefly 'feed the troll' and give him the gratification of seeing a GENUINE conspiracy to squash him. This is the price we pay.

But whatever you do, DO something. Because if you don't, if by apathy and inattention Alec's mean-spirited brand of political correctness gains purchase and gets even one tiny concession, he'll be encouraged to come back and do this again and again. Bitchslapping him in the privacy of a blog is not enough. He must be repudiated publicy.

Write to the memorialists, write to the parks people, write to the architects. Let them know we are aware of the nutter at the back of the bus and encourage them to ignore him.

Missy Vixen -- His supporters are over at his website and a few other blogs. You don't want to read them, believe me. I was trying to find out some personal information about him (like if he's a student or faculty at Stanford, where he took his college degree, how old he is) and found these other sites. BTW, he's a "senior staff writer" at Stanford Review, a student newspaper which is independent of Stanford University. He apparently put himself through college but doesn't say where. He's the third of four children of John Rawls and his wife.

The bottom line is that the families of the victims were involved in choosing this desgin. They have no problem with it. They think Mr. Rawls and his ilk are crazy.I have no reason to disagree with them.

"Put himself through college"? His father is _John freaking Rawls_: he'd have tuition benefits from Harvard usable anywhere, and any college would let him in just from the name alone if he demonstrated minimal competence in spelling and addition.

Because I was taught to share good things, I made a friend read this. Since she spent some of her time in the army doing psy-ops work, I also asked her (after the snickering stopped) "If you wanted to plant divisive, trouble-making stories in the minds of America, would you do what this guy's doing?"

Her answer was strongly affirmative, with the added note that AR's whole campaign was, from Osama's point of view, Hot Stuff, because it could be used abroad (or, for that matter, possibly even within the US) to show how ignorant and culturally insensitive Americans were, and thus stir up anti-American feelings, certainly abroad, and possibly within the US as well.

Therefore, those reading this who have long suspected that Michelle Malkin was in fact anti-American may well be correct; those reading this who are tempted to dismiss AR's burblings as mere psychotic rantings may be wrong--psychotic or not, they may be used to discredit the US. Whether AR himself is an enemy agent or not I cannot say--but he's certainly playing into Osama's hands. Almost as if he was being paid to do so...

Now, I feel he's probably just a half-educated idiot frootloop, but there's that little voice saying "If I really wanted to stir up a stink among the ignorant and hard of thinking, this would work."It's more likely AR's a tool* than wearers of traditional Navajo jewelry are participants in an anti-American conspiracy.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this but a miss of 2 degrees meanse that the margin of error was lemme see 2 degrees on either side of single point is 5 a range of 5 degrees out of 360 or 1 in 72. Jesus Christ it's about as likely as winning the lottery! Impossible that it's a coincidence. I also wonder how many miles off from going through Mecca, a line drawn 2 degrees off, over thousands and thousands of miles, would be. I don't do math very well, certainly not well enough to count pixels using sophisticated googly technologies, so bear that in mind. Now the celebration of the birth of Jesus on the 25th of December coinciding with the solstice and the feast of saturnalia, now that's a 1 in 365 coincidence but 1 in 72, man that just can't be.

Will nobody come to the defense of this poor crescent moonbat? All right, then, I will. I mean, I WILL.

First, let's just assume that the site represents a CRESCENT. Let's assume that since it's red PART of the year, it represents a red crescent. (Just like the red crescent in THE Colorado flag! Which, if you ignore the parts of the C that aren't in the crescent is only ABOUT two percent off!) Now let's assume that the red crescent is INDICATIVE of a mosque. You with me so FAR?

Now assume THAT ALL muslims are evil. Then assume that they won't MIND infidels profaning the mosque we've already assumed (SEE above!). Now we can see that IT'S only A short step from everything I've proven by assumption above to the INEVITABLE conclusion that it will HARM AMERICA and DISHONOR OUR HEROES.

And how does it prove that, you ask? Simple! We ASSUME it! QED. Case CLOSED!! My toaster hurts!!!

My friend Lucy was living in Nashville when the "Mother Teresa" cinnamon bun first turned up. Lucy got a look at it. She said it kinda looked like Mother Teresa, but it really looked like Popeye the Sailor. People find what they look for. The difference is that people who find Popeye the Sailor don't decide it's a miracle and phone their local newspaper.

Muslimsdothistoo, except they find holy calligraphy rather than images. It's usually the name of Allah, found in clouds or fish scales or sliced vegetables.

Personally, I regard it as a miracle that in this thread we have near-unanimity of opinion in a vigorous political argument in an online forum.

Alec Rawls looks at the world and finds seekrit evil conspiracies, the finding of which make Alec Rawls seem smart and important. In the long run, that can't be a good idea. Finding God in an aubergine has got to be better for your soul.

Murdoch is a graduate of UCLA, and has designed buildings on the University of California's LA, Irvine and Santa Barbara campuses. The UC system is not only Not Stanford, but it is partly funded by taxpayers (SOCIALIST). Therefore it is evil, and anyone associated with it is evil.

Some mathA while back, Anonymous said:The line that bisects the curve (whose endpoints are ambiguous, making the bisection ambiguous) is about 2 degrees off. Chance of that happening at random: 4 in 360, or 1 in 90. If this were post-hypothesis sample, that would be minutely suggestive, but given the selection effect, a 1% likelihood is meaningless.

It's much worse than that.

By "oriented towards Mecca," Rawls could mean any of fourthings are facing east: the convex side, the concave side,or either of the left or right arms of the "crescent". He arguesthat the convex side is "facing" mecca, and he also seems tomake an argument for one of the arms of another "crescent"around the "sundial" pointing eastward.

So the raw chance of one of these four parts of a crescentpointing directly at mecca is not 1/360, it's (1/360 * 4)of 1 in 90. Meaning that we're discussing probabilitieswithin only 90 degrees of arc.

Now lets look at the allowable "slop" in the calculations. How far off an exact orientation would Rawls allow? Clearly2 degrees is allowable. Five? Ten? Ten degrees doesn't looklike much so let's say that if one of the four orientation pointson a crescent is within 10 degrees, Rawls will claim it ispointing in that direction.

Ten degrees north plus ten degrees south sweeps out an arc of 20 degrees. Give another 5 degrees of fudgable endpoint location on each end and we're up to 30 degrees.

So in Rawls' analysis, ithe probability of a crescent randomly"pointing" towards Mecca is 30/90 or one in three

I studied the so-called Mr. Rawls posts and the responses. Something just didn't add up. Eventually I figured it out.

If you notice, THE LAST LETTER OF RAWLS FIRST NAME IS A C!!!

Every time he posts, that letter, a crescent symbol of Islam, goes out across the Internet. And it is an absolute certainty that some of our computers are orientated so that the "c" will be in the direction of Mecca, turning those very computers into a Mosque.

So this alleged Mr. Rawls can be none other than a Bin Laden agent! Proof!!!

Make no mistake, the orientation thing is real. I just discovered that my home computer is oriented towards a Jack in the Box, and I have gained 20 pounds this last year. Coincidence? I think not.

Also, if you go to Mr. Rawls site, if that is his name, you will see other clues that expose him as an agent of the terrorists. Notice that he expresses major concern about the rise of feminine influences in our liberal politics, since he argues that women like to surrender and liberals do as well, creating an obvious link. Then, when you put that together with how the French like croissants (a crescent) and we all know they are a feminine nation of surrender.

And while it has gotten no attention here, Rawls is also concerned about the tower being erected at the memorial. Well, we all understand the dangers of a tower coming into contact with a damp, fertile crescent. Put that together with the attitude of the Taliban toward women, their focus on destroying the towers in New York, and it is obvious that whoever Mr. Rawls is, he is likely having trouble erecting his own tower.

Let's assume that Mr. Rawls is correct, and that the memorial purposely evokes Islamic symbolism. Why would that necessarily be a bad thing? Think about it - one way to tell Islamofascists that we are stronger than they are is to co-opt their religious symbols to honor our dead. It's the 21st century equivalent of eating the enemy's heart. I say build a mosque at Ground Zero, and say fuck you bin Laden very much.

I think the pathetic thing about all of this is that there is already a public and explicit explanation for the line intersecting the circle (represented by the offending walls and glass blocks): it is the direction of Flight 93. The circle sits outside the crash site, so that visitors can look at, but not tread upon, the burial site of the victims. It is a natural amphitheater, adjacent to the ground of the tragedy.

Since the plane was flying roughly southeast at the time, then any circular field which intersects it will face either northeast or southwest. So the odds of the memorial facing Mecca are considerably reduced from random chance -- but the intent isn't to face Mecca, it is to commemorate the truncated circle (a 'wounded' circle, so to speak) that 9/11 represents to us: we are no longer whole, our perfect world is missing a piece. And the arc of the circle opens directly onto the source of that wound, the cemetery in which our peace has been buried. At the same time, the circle helps to embrace us, as the arms of a loved one, and embraces the lives lost. It is deeply symbolic, and aptly emotional.

Instead of looking outside the circle for obscure relationships (apparently visible only by dissecting a bitmap interpolation an artist's rendering through the unreliable 'eye' of Adobe acrobat and MS Paint), why not accept the obvious explanation for the design, as stated by the designers? Isn't the simplest explanation the most likely, anyway?

[Author's aside: as an artist and designer, let me point out that the other most likely format for this cemetery -- a circle with the crash site in the center -- is abominable and tasteless: a)It would look like a target, b) it would look like an expanding blast wave from an explosion, c) it would look like an entry wound... and d) people, by surrounding it, would inevitably walk across it. Need I say more?]

One more thing. After combing his website, I can't find any reference to a single resource he used other than some raster images from a PDF and MS-PAINT. He's measuring by pixels. A pixel is probably about 5 feet. I dunno, I'm making that up. But for fuck's sake, he's using MS-PAINT. And choosing arbitrary points to measure from. And he's measuring them using the LINE TOOL in MS-PAINT. He calculates the shadows from the tower using some java applet and maps them out using more lines in MS-PAINT (and cleverly describes this as "CAD generated shadows". Geez, at least change the default colors! Given the margin of error this all must introduce to the calculations, the arch probably points closer to a McDonalds in Beijing than towards Mecca. After spending half this thread yelling at people to check his FACTS and address all the FACTS that he's putting out, I really wish someone would so he'd shut up.

2 degrees off, huh? That's a honking big error! Surveyors work in hundredths and thousandths of a degree ... and of a foot. (I work in the geographic-information department at a major utility company. We use CAD and GIS software routinely, at a 1-foot error level. I can tell you, MSPaint isn't used here for anything but decorating stuff.)

Alec, one thing you need to consider: what with the wholeinformation superhighway and all, this little brainfart of yoursis going to follow you for the rest of your life. Twenty yearsfrom now, you'll be applying for a job and your prospectiveemployer will google-equivalent your name and guesswhat will come up? This.

Are you sure that's what you wanted?

I wonder what this guy is up to these days: UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

I had suggested that Mr. Rawls - after all his yelling about "look at the evidence" - should lug a theodolite in to the site itself and see what the relationships are ON THE GROUND.Over in Mr. Rawls' world, MS Paint and an aerial view seems to count as "evidence". He doesn't seem to understand that surveyors work to hundredths or even thousandths of a degree - and that a miss of a degree or two is just screaming "coincidence".

I've driven through that part of the country on Rt. 30, but, not currently being in day-trip range, I went to the Flight 93 Memorial Siteand to the National Park Service Flight 93 sitefor a virtual look around. (Which is still not an actual site survey, but more useful than looking at the aerial views. In Rawls' world, it certainly counts as looking at the evidence.)

Rawls has apparently missed the starkest feature of the proposed memorial: The Tower of Voices acts as gnomon for any directional alignments implied by the site. (Think of it as the heelstone at Stonehenge. )

I have an actual life to live, so I'll leave it for Mr. Rawls to plot the various alignments of the Tower with the other features of the site.I'm sure with a little work in Paint, Rawls will be able to find alignments not only on Mecca, but also on the other Moslem holy places - the cities of Medina and Jerusalem. (The alignment points will be separated by inches, feet at most.)

My predictions: 1)Rawls will be incapable of understanding that these alignments are not secret coded messages that only he has the insight to detect. 2) His insistence on the importance of these newly discovered alignments will provide us with further entertainment.

Homework assignment for Mr. Rawls. I was told that the usual method for orienting mosques to Mecca (and I'm not knowledgeable enough about Islam to know whether this is correct) is to use the rhumb line and not the great circle route. The rhumb line route is longer, but it has the advantage that it can be navigated at a constant heading. To maintain a great circle route, one most constantly change heading as latitude changes.

Rhumb lines or loxodromes are tracks of constant true course. With the exception of meridians and the equator, they are not the same as great circles.

He goes on to give several formulae related to calculating rhumb lines, the most useful for the current discussion is probably the following.

The true course between the points is given by (angles measured in radians):

tc= mod(atan2(lon1-lon2,log(tan(lat2/2+pi/4)/tan(lat1/2+pi/4))),2*pi)

Note: this formula fails if the rhumb line crosses 180 E/W, but he gives another formula for that case just below this one.

Who knows, the difference between the rhumb line and the GC route might just account for the (FRICKING HUGE!) 2 degrees error. I don't know, because I haven't done the calculation. It might actually make your data look worse, but I'm sure that Rawls can come up with some alternate hypothesis which fits the data.

Also check out these pages:

He also has a really cool great circle calculator at http://williams.best.vwh.net/gccalc.htm (Javascript).

You might also want to read this article on Rhumb Lines: http://williams.best.vwh.net/ellipsoid/node3.html

fyi, as you would expect from the fact that the PDF is for download, the images are low-resolution (specifically 96 dpi) and it's a high-compression jpeg. That means that the information in the pixels has been averaged with surrounding pixels to produce a smaller file.

In other words, even if the calculations were accurate based on the image, they'd still be a degree or two off, particularly if the image was blown up and interpolated again in, god help us all, MacPaint.

Mark B. from Austin: I think you've got it. This thread went up on Friday, and I haven't yet run into the Moslem guy I know at work to collar him to just ask him: "Hey, which way is Mecca?"

But I'd bet you're absolutely correct. I'm speculating here (unlike Rawls, I have no idea how mosques are aligned), but it strikes me that a believer would figure, "Well. Mecca is east of here, and little south: I should pray at a heading of 95 degrees or so" -- the rhomb line -- rather than figure: "Well, the Great Circle heading to Mecca is 55 degrees, so I'll pray toward the NORTHEAST. The difference (in Pennsylvania) between the two headings must be something like 40 degrees. (And don't forget to add in plus-or-minus a couple of degrees, too, to cunningly disguise the hidden Alignment.)

As you know, Apple is a COMMUNIST company. Therefore, if ONE IS TO UNDERSTAND the islamofascistcommieliberalwahabbist(antichristian)supersecretsquirrel PLOT, MS Paint is the only TOOL permissible. FurthERMORE, IF the image is compressed, that only proves that the MOSLEMS are hiding something in the averaged pixels. Perhaps a misdirection to lead the SIMPLE observer astray. It will NOT work on ME.

ALSO the line I drew using NOTEPAD and IMAGING for WINDOWS on a standard MERCATOR projection shows clearly that the tip of the line of the trees which form the arc of the circle of the crescent of the covenant which completes the implied circle in the dirt points in the general direction of ISRAEL, the ultimate target of Saddam bin Laden's evil PLOT.

Good point, julia. Given that Rawls uses crappy low resolution illustrations as his source data, a measurement error of up to about 1 degree for each end of the arc is plausible.

I think the radius of the circle in the illustration is about 3" so 1 pixel would be about 1 degree.

I would suggest to Rawls that he hit up the architect for more detailed engineering data but I expect that any employee of Murdoch would tell Rawls to go fuck himself, since he's already called the architect an islamofascist infiltrator.

So I take back my comment about Rawl's aiming error being frickin' huge. It's just that his source data is crap, and he an incompetent researcher. He's still a moron.

BTW, the jury is in on the rhumb line. The memorial isn't oriented anywhere near the rhumb line from Pennsylvania to Mecca.

Finally, it's probably no coincidence that Rawls' blog is called errortheory.

During a time of crisis, a certain percentage of the population will always crap its collective pants, go hysterical and start finding monsters under the bed. Mr. Rawls obviously belongs to this group. This extremist-lunatic segment of the population-- old McCarthyites, Birchers, Freepers, survivalists, and outright KKK-- has been cowering in the shadows for years, waiting for an excuse to sell out our country to barbarism and totalitarianism. The Bush era has given them their chance to finally crawl out from under their rocks and proudly spout their extremist drivel on a national level.

It is typical of this element of society to attempt to shift its own cowardice, weakness and self-loathing onto others. Mr. Rawls does this by spewing hatred, fear and contempt for the opposite sex, those of opposing political views, those of other religious beliefs, those of other races... There are no doubt other groups targeted by this small-minded, pathetic bigot, but I don't have the stomach to read any more of his poorly thought-out, hate-filled, absurdist filth.

At first I thought Mr. Rawls was an amusing wacko, then I thought he was a prankster/troll. Now that I have investigated a little of the slime trail he has left on the Net over the past few years, I have come to the conclusion that he is exactly what he appears to be-- A craven, pathetic, hate- and fear-filled, delusional extremist.

It's pointless to attempt to reason with someone whose thinking is so clouded by hatred, superstition and fear, of course. Mr. Rawls' behavior on this board proves that he could continue his Mad Hatter arguments until his last opponent has dropped out of sheer frustration, and then declare this triumph of fanaticism a "victory."

It's bad enough when small-minded, hate-filled, bigots beget their own kind. But for Alec Rawls to be his parents' son is nothing short of a tragedy. His parents gave him enough intelligence to know that his behavior is a disgrace to his species, his country, his family and himself. We can only hope that he eventually uses his mental ability for good, looks at himself honestly, sees that he has a serious problem, and seeks help.

I believe the person who set up my satellite dish purposely set it up to point o Mecca. Am I now a terrorist sympathizer? Just to be sure, I put on my red t-shirt, held my arms out in a semicircle (crescent) and spun around a few times. At some point I was facing Mecca. I do believe that by Alic's logic, I have become a terrorist sympathizer. Holy Crap! I have become a terrorist! That’s all I had to do !?!? Well then, go burn in Hell, or whatever it is you infidels do once damned by the likes of Alec does. On second thought, why expend so much energy on this idiot? I'm guilty myself. but no more.

OK, I've done a little googling on the rhumb line Qiblah vs. great circle Qiblah, and I'm convinced that mostly, the great circle orientation is what is used in modern times.

If a real expert in Islam were to along, I'll defer to them, but the anecdotal evidence that I've gathered so far tends towards great circle Qiblahism. Rhomb line Qiblahism has it's proponents, but the all sound like Rawls-like embittered wackos.

Well, it's starting to look like this train wreck is slowly comingto an end. Maybe it's time to have a look at the numbersso far.

There have been 486 comments posted since Friday night.Total number of unique posters: 147 Total number of anonymous posts 145 Number of posts by Rawls: 24There's no way to tell, of course, but it seems safe to saysomewhere between 150 and 300 peoplehave weighed in on the issue.Number of posts agreeing with Rawls: zero.

Buncha 'tards, I guess is what we all are. Alas. Everybodysing along:

"Now I guess I'll have to tell 'emThat I got no cerebellumGonna get my Ph.D.I'm a teenage lobotomy"

According to the site plan for the winning design (PDF) posted at the memorial's official web site, there is no arc facing toward Mecca at all. If you go back and look at Mr. Rawls' site, you'll find that he's getting worked up over a line drawn through points of his choice at, more or less, right angles to the actual arc of the Bowl or Crescent of Embrace. That arc, what I'd call a horseshoe if I were describing it to someone else, is open to the southwest. (If I understand correctly, that's the angle from which Flight 93 approached its crash site.) Someone facing into the arc would be praying in the general direction of Iceland; someone facing out of it through the opening would be praying toward Tijuana.

The Tower of Voices seems to open to the southeast, but it's hard to tell from this diagram, since it looks sometimes to me like the tower opening might be offset from the arcs of hedges to be planted around it. I don't think there's enough info here to get a clear sense of just where someone facing out of the tower opening might be looking, but I will be that it's not Mecca. More likely, I'd think, it's simply rotated 90 degrees from the big Bowl.

In short: when someone gets that worked up about tangential features, it's well going back and checking the original. And what you'll find if you do is that nothing on the memorial site is oriented toward Mecca at all.

This may have been mentioned before, but I have not had time to read through all 486 previous posts: What direction was the plane traveling at the time of the crash? If memory serves me correctly, it was headed East toward Washington, D.C. Might this be an alternative (and more plausible) explaination for the memorial's orientation? Since I'm sorta simple an no good at math, I drew a picture to help my idea. Here is my first attempt:

Airplane ---> EastMemorial ---> East

The foregoing seems more reasonable to me than Alec's:

Mosque --->EastMemorial ---> East

Just wonderin' if Alec examined the "Airplane direction of travel" theory and other possible explainations for geographic orientation before concluding the memorial must be facing Mecca. Also, what does it mean if an airplane's swept wings form the rough shape of a crescent? Woot! Airplane ---> swept wings --->flying EastMemorial--->crescent--->facing EastHoly shit, could Murdoch's design be that obvious?

At least Mr. Rawls is kind enough to warn us not to spread his discovery of Islamic hijacking of memorial committees. This clearly is not due to any doubts he has about his revealation so perhaps he really thinks there is profit potential in such thinking/writing. Does he want to be sure his name is on the by-line in The Star or The National Enquirer?

Mark B.: Your "second" post was correct. We (Muslims) do use the great circle method to determine the local Qibla. And so from Somerset, PA (the closest city to the Memorial), the Qibla is 55:2:47 degrees east from north.

I have a brief post on Rawls and the Crescent of Embrace (as the Memorial design is known) here.

OMG - this is too funny. I'd forgotten the fact that when you type in CAPS, it means it's true! And many thanks for the "Taken in Hand" spot - I do think he knows a lot less than he thinks, about women and sex (as well as everything else, apparently). Too funny (and pretty sad and pathetic as well).

Since someone else mentioned the way some people saw "Noah's Ark" in the rocks, I wanted to post a link to a discussion thread on the very topic (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=118996). It's long, but you can see the same kind of denial and cherry picking (and the ego!) that this Rawls character has in abundance. Just thought it might be of interest in you like that kind of thing, not to get off the topic